Watson, a Senior Lecturer in Photography at Westminster University (Watson, n.d.) has produced a number of sets of images that portray the relationship between man and land and in particular, ‘the spatial relationship between landscape and architecture’ (ibid.)

Whilst studying LPE this is a topic that I have become very interested in.  His series Soundings from the Estuary (Watson, n.d.) particularly caught my eye as his images show what would be a natural habitat, in a sense polluted by the buildings and debris left behind by man.  

Some images, for example Fig. 1 focus on the buildings, the architecture, that is present in the estuary and in use today.  In this example the grey of the sky is echoed in the water but in the building too, creating the impression that it is all as one. Whilst the building does not necessarily look as if it belongs there, it also does not look hugely out of place.

Fig. 2 is different, here there is a clash in colours between the land and the building, now the building, much larger in the frame looks out of place.  The footpath sign in the foreground which has been vandalised to the extent that it is unreadable creates a sense that this is now a wasteland, one that is not a pleasant place to be.  Quite a different feeling from Fig. 1.

Fig. 3 is different again in the sense that there are no major buildings in shot.  We cannot see the estuary but what we can see is discarded anchors, this continues the maritime feel but also the wasteland feeling continues as these anchors do not look like they have been used in recent times.

Finally, Fig. 4 shows a car long abandoned in the estuary itself.  It is not clear how it got there and it is upside down.  Again the feeling of wasteland but here we see the estuary and the natural habitat.  The image is captured with the tide out meaning that the mud seabed can be seen, this matches the nub covered car.  The same image taken with water covering the mud would look very different.

Reflection

When looked at as a set of thumbnail images, they do combine as a set despite the fact that they are of different colours, and different scenes.  Nearly all of the images show some form of grassland and this helps, many show the water, but less than half.  This is another example of something anchoring a set of images, but that anchor not needing to be present in all of the images themselves.  This goes further than Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi (Soth, 2004) where no images show the river, here we do have an anchor and we are sure that the images all come from the same area, but, the set does not depend on showing the estuary in every image.

On framing, whilst all show some form of industrial or discarded item in the estuary area, the framing is not one of typology, they are all differently framed.  This is an area I struggle with.  Typology with rigorous identical framing I can do, but it is this almost alternate form of typology, with framing variety, that I struggle to replicate and need to continue to evolve in my practice since this set of images comes very close to what I would like to capture myself.  What is clear is that all of Watson’s images in the full set follow the pattern of one of the four images that I have included here and perhaps that is the secret, to establish a few, but limited number of framing techniques or formulas and then replicate them within the set.

Bibliography

Watson, F., n.d. Profile – Frank Watson. [online] Frankwatsonphotography.com. Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/profile/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Watson, F., n.d. Soundings from the Estuary – Frank Watson. [online] Frankwatsonphotography.com. Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/soundings-from-the-estuary/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Soth, A., 2004. Alec Soth | Sleeping by the Mississippi. [online] Alecsoth.com. Available at: <https://alecsoth.com/photography/projects/sleeping-by-the-mississippi> [Accessed 29 January 2021].

Figures

Figure 1. Watson, F., 2014. Untitled. [image] Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/soundings-from-the-estuary/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Figure 2. Watson, F., 2014. Untitled. [image] Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/soundings-from-the-estuary/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Figure 3. Watson, F., 2014. Untitled. [image] Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/soundings-from-the-estuary/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].

Figure 4. Watson, F., 2014. Untitled. [image] Available at: <https://frankwatsonphotography.com/soundings-from-the-estuary/> [Accessed 15 February 2021].