Fly-photography

A little while back, Rob sent me an image from some work he’d been making for the Canal and River Trust. Four long samplers arranged together, colours draining watery like litmus paper test strips. At first I thought they were paintings: brush marks of light seem to flow across them. They spoke of somewhere and nowhere, slipping into space. 

On our last field recording outing at Aldborough, I discovered how he’d made them. Using his grandad’s old 35mm camera, he set the exposure to two or four seconds. He stood, camera central and gripped – pause – then click and UP, he whipped the camera over his shoulder. By the second or third time watching this, I realised what it reminded me of: fly fishing. Rob’s muscle memory had echoed time on the river, to time in the field. And rather than sea trout, here he was catching light. Fly-photography: casting out to capture a moment. 

Rob was particularly interested in views where colour blends or discords could be experimented with; shifts in space or light. The lovely thing about going back to film, was that in the two canisters he used, we wouldn’t see the results for at least a week. We were unsure what he’d catch. And when the films were developed? Well, what a treat. From the ordering, we were able to recall where on our field route we’d been. But those spaces were often transformed beyond recognition, to become something more of an abstract painting, alive with marks and strokes. 

Looking through all these, it is hard to pick a favourite. They’re all so different, each holding for me a different memory of our exploratory time on site. Fields of wheat have been captured as greening hues, pecked with the fine pencilling of yellow heads. A sunset has become a fresh tear in the gloaming. A shot from deep in the quarry captures vegetation flashing into sky, somehow capturing the depth of place, a strange slipping of time below surface. Rob has sampled these originals, choosing strips to extract and place alongside one another, producing yet another kind of image and sense of stratified landscape. 

These are beautiful pieces; ones that deserve being blown up large and explored daily. But, as with so many things in this collaboration, they’re also inspiring aspects of my own visual practice. Some of the colours that have emerged, the sense of space and the delicacy of marks are feeding into the development of my final paintings. And looking at the dashes and flow of light in these pieces, I’m reminded of the importance of continuing to play and enjoy the creative tools to hand.