Jem Southam

I'm quite fond of the photographs of English photographer Jem Southam. I'm sure in part it's because he depicts places where I lived and grew up. I'm intimately familiar with the chalk cliffs and pebble beaches of the Channel coast, the Dew-ponds of the Downs and the fields and lanes of Devon. It's also the kind of photography that I sometimes like to make.

There is a quiet and gentle intensity to his work. Seemingly casual, yet able to capture the real essence and feel of a place. (I also love how so many stories about him inaccurately repeat that he uses and 8x10 "plate" camera - as if a regular 8x10 camera is something from the mists of history)

There is a nice interview in SeeSaw Magazine, a short radio interview here and some gallery stuff here and here . The one book of his that I have is Landscape Stories