Image size: 20.5 x 15.2 cms
Paper size: 25.2 x 20 cms

Orientation to be confirmed

Inscribed on the reverse: (upper left) 8/5

John Blakemore writes that “The studio, the empty space, the constructed image. I had stopped working in the landscape in 1981, no longer feeling it appropriate to photograph in a landscape I depicted as pristine, edenic when everywhere the land was threatened, corrupted, despoiled by human activity.

The studio became a retreat, a haven, a space where more obvious fictions could be made. Where I could pursue a fascination with 'nature but where the images did not refer directly to an imagined state of the world. The 'studio' is any space in my home where I choose to photograph, where light beckons. I work exclusively with daylight, continuing a dependence upon the rhythms of the day, the seasons, morning light from an east-facing window, long exposures in the dim light of winter.

In the beginning a return to simplicity, a retreat from the complexities of the late landscape work: a single leaf, precise photographic description, then a gradual return to the complex.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p92))