The photography shows at the Free Range exhibition displayed a wealth of talent from a wide range of students, all collected under one roof at the Truman brewery. A few photographic gems really stood out for us and, being the lovely bunch that we are, we thought we’d pass on our tips of names to look out for in the future…
Amanda Absolom’s series entitled ‘According to Nature’ was created by placing flowers onto a scanner and “allowing the scanner to create the image”. It’s amazing how simply scanning something can capture the fleeting beauty of a flower in such detail and so sumptuously. The black background that comes from leaving-the-lid-up evokes the stark contrast found in classical still life paintings. Cataloguing flowers with such a harsh, modern method makes Absolom’s images detached and impersonal, reminding me of the biological illustrative studies of days gone by. If the ‘Edwardian Lady’ Edith Holden had been writing her diary in today’s technological age, this is how she’d illustrate it.
Rebecca Wilson has something to hide…or so it seems from her collection of dreamy, surreal photographs in which women hide their faces behind balloons or seek solitude inside zip-up hoods.
Esther Bouiller’s photography explores Cornwall’s sustainable communities; shedding light on craftsmen who keep traditional skills alive, gypsy caravan dwellers, compost toilets and camel farms. A world away from doomsday style natural disaster photography (which is often presented to us as the only reason to curb our carbon consumption), Bouiller hopes her gentle images of a county moving towards sustainability will inspire others to make simple green changes to their lives.
Sarah Stratton is down at the bottom of the garden giving us a bugs eye view of the unnoticed and overlooked areas of gardens in her traditionally hand printed ‘Small Worlds’ series. Dismissing the controlling green fingers of a gardener, Stratton points to the forgotten nooks and crannies where nature has been allowed to go wild.
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