RECLAIMED (2018-19)

The Fens, originally a region of low-lying marshland in the east of England, has been artificially drained over centuries to provide some of Britain’s most fertile agricultural land. It is a landscape of agribusiness with monoculture at it’s core, defined by human migration and long-term reclamation from the sea which Paul Hart has photographed for over ten years. His narrative examines the complex interrelation between humanity and nature and raises important questions about human-altered topography and our occupation and stewardship of this land. By focusing on the often-overlooked elements in familiar vistas Hart’s aesthetics carry a documentary sensibility that allow the landscapes to define themselves. He works solely with the analogue process employing traditional darkroom practice to convey something of the soulful in a landscape that is rarely considered of aesthetic merit. RECLAIMED concludes Hart’s three-part project on the region. The first two series FARMED (Dewi Lewis 2016) and DRAINED (Dewi Lewis 2018) have won a number of international awards and received considerable critical acclaim. In 2018 work from the project was awarded the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize (Austria/UK) and in 2019 shortlisted for the Hariban Award (Japan). “Hart’s landscapes create a dialogue between art and document, lyricism and storytelling, the sublime and the ordinary. Almost everywhere, rectilinear and regular shapes unfold, impeccably drawn furrows responding to rows of trees, industrial constructions and metal structures... No movement animates this nature morte, no bird awakens these low and heavy skies and endless horizons... Unlike the sort of landscape photography that long incarnated the collective and historical body of the nation, Hart’s images take on a universal value : the battered and exhausted Fens resonate like a subtle metaphor for what humanity engenders and inflicts on itself.” Isabelle Bonnett : Denatured Landscape RECLAIMED (Dewi Lewis 2020)