The New English Landscape
Horsey Island, Essex, March 2013
The New English Landscape came out in October last year and, ever since then it has become the best example of a “chance encounter” in our store. Most people buy it when they happen to stumble upon its cover browsing our shelves, and that is how it has become a steady best seller. The book is a collaborative project between photographer Jason Orton and writer Ken Worpole. It sets out to explore the changing geography of landscape aesthetics since the II World War by looking at four different landscapes along the Essex shoreline. The River Lea, the London Gateway Container Port, Maylandsea, Mersea Island and Horsey Island. What I find most compelling about this project is knowing that, although writer and photographer spent many months walking and discussing these landscapes together, each brings us their own and unique interpretation of the same experience through their chosen medium. Their work stands side by side in this elegantly designed volume, but neither is subordinate to the other, making us look at Orton’s photographs with a sense of discovering how his visual narrative gives us a different voice to Worpole’s text.
For a more in depth review of the book check out Eddie Procter’s blog, “Landscapism”, which deals with all matters relating to landscape http://landscapism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-new-english-landscape-review.html
66pp 