My personal inspiration for this work is the photographer James Ravilious, born 1939, who documented rural and village life in Devon, across three decades from the 1970's to his death in 1999. His photographs, always timeless, always beautiful, represented the rural way of life in a hugely positive and heart warming manner. Even when photographing the hardships of people working the exposed landscapes in the depths of winter, James' images captured the soul and the humanity of a culture surviving apart from metropolitan life, a very English and traditional way of life that as time passes becomes more and more distant from our saccharin city-orientated existences.
Building an archive of photographs over the coming months, I will seek out locations of a diverse variety, creating a series of images which give the viewer a flavour of the agricultural industry in this age, and an unashamedly positive view of these hard working people without whom we could not sustain our society. Often put under pressure from government legislation, constrained by European policy, attacked by animal rights groups and seen as out of touch with our hi-tech bias, I will produce images that show our food production to be about the people and their relationship with land and agriculture, good people, stoic and deserving of our respect and gratitude.
"As James' pictures show, this is a special landscape with an elegiac [epic/poetic] beauty all its own. It is also a rich subject for an archive, being one of the last regions where the English rural tradition is still alive. Few of the others - if any - have been recorded in such depth."
Robin Ravilious, in reference to her husbands life work.
If you are reading this as a farmer or land owner yourself and would be happy for me to come and photograph at your farm, or if you'd like to discuss the work for any other reason, please get in touch via the following email:
leewilliamhughes@gmail.com
Leek Auctions - 23rd October 2012
