Peter Burgess

The beauty of nature is often symbolised by spring flowers, the colour of autumn foliage, a snow capped mountain landscape, cherry blossom, and other familiar characterisations. They all help to signify our acknowledgement of a seasonal change, and for most people that is the limit of any engagement.

The American photographer Eliot Porter wrote of the slow quiet processes that pass almost unnoticed from season to season. His photographs of a woodland floor in winter inspired me to look more closely at what was around and under my feet. The realisation that the natural landscape of forest, mountain or moor all start in or on the ground; that these slow and quiet processes underly and support all that we simplistically describe as landscape, caused me to think seriously about what I was trying to do with a camera.

So what am I trying to do with a camera?

Put simply, make photographs that are more ‘about’ than ‘of’.

BA (Hons) Visual Communication, University of Brighton