“To be alone
in the landscape was a release, a return to the pleasures and pursuits of my
childhood which had been lost to me”
-
John Blakemore (quote from’ ‘Photographs 1955-2010: John Blakemore’)
John
Blakemore often retreats into a landscape when a tumultuous event has happened
in his life. His first landscape work ‘Wounds of Trees’, was his first
landscape work in which he developed his sense of using photography as a
metaphor for communicating his feelings (the landscape work ‘Metamorphosis’ and
‘All Flows’ continue exploring the landscape as a metaphor showing it as a form
of energy, both as a constructive and destructive force).
from Wounds of Trees
In 1981, John
Blakemore stopped working in the landscape as he felt that the land he was
depicted in his photography was pristine and untouched, whereas the reality was
that the land everywhere was being threatened, corrupted and despoiled by human
interference.
