John Davies
http://www.johndavies.uk.com/
"In recent years I have drawn inspiration from issues relating to my surroundings and conditioning. Initially I develop an interest in documenting aspects of my immediate social political landscape. These concerns often reflect a national if not international significance. I am not so much interested in entertaining an audience or providing vehicles for escape but in delivering a highly crafted detailed image conveying a sense of reality. A reality that shares a recognition of aspects of urban living. But importantly, making images of a landscape that attempts to question our acceptance and perception of the inevitable consequences of living in a post imperialist society and within a post industrial landscape".
-John Davies - November 2011.
John's work has a strong and prominent message conveying political issues and representing the damage we have left behind on the land. Although my work does not convey such strong message, i feel subtle aspects shine through as the audience makes their own decisions of what my images convey.
"John Davies is one of today's most outstanding British photographers, he became famous through his research on the English industrial landscape, observed in vast and detailed views...John Davies's work belongs to the world of contemporary documentary photography. Faithful to a refined, pure black and white, taken on as the absolute rule of a subtle, analytic style. He chooses the vastness of space inhabited by the powerful elements of nature and the contradictory ones of culture to operate in two directions. On the one hand, the evocation of emotional states through the photographic rendering of a space-light that is alive, almost metaphysical, and recalls the symbolisation of the forces of nature in Turner. On the other, a crystal-clear gaze that sounds the material aspects of the contemporary landscape which is tied to the development of the productive activities and concrete structuring of the world through the molding power of economy and property".
- Roberta Valtorta - 2000. Roberta Valtorta is photographic historian and professor at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Milan.