Brianhuman's Blog

Quy Fen is endowed with lovely willows, soft billowy trees whose flickering grey-green leaves bring a touch of olive-like Mediterranean light to the dour Fens.  Studies have shown that in England willows are home to 266 insect species, second only to the oak (284) and far ahead of fir (16) and holly (6).  Robert Macfarlane pays homage to the mystery of the willow in The Lost Words: ‘Willow, when the wind blows so your branches billow, / O will you whisper while we listen so we learn what / words your long leaves loosen? / …’.

Photo: Willow, Quy Fen, Cambs, May 2018

DavidR and TimE both sent me a link to the BBC news item, ‘A suitcase full of photographic wonder’ – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-43782267.  This features the work of John Turner (d. 1987) and reports on the discovery of a suitcase of street photographs from the 1930s to around 1960.  Apart from the sheer delight at seeing the pictures, this is a timely reminder of two things.  First, the importance of recognising the current enthusiasm for street photography as an invaluable contribution to documenting social history.  Second, the need to think about what we do with our photographs: John Turner’s negatives have survived in the metaphorical shoe box under the bed, where will our digital files be 30, let alone 80, years hence?

Photo: Passing in the street, London, 1956, John Turner

Monday 28^th May, with J to Quy Fen, walking past fields of silky barley, shimmering seas running to distant blue-grey hedges.  The farmer will think this landscape of fecundity, of a reliable and consistent crop, beautiful.  We too think it beautiful, despite knowing of the fertilizers, pesticides and subsidies that create it.  Pylons stride to the horizon.  Engineers with admire them; and we depend on the power they carry.  The aesthetics of the landscape is full of contradictions.

Photo: Quy Fen, May 2018

Coffee and lunch with Roy Hammans and David Runnacles yesterday.  Lively discussions around all things photographic, from vintage cameras to the merits of the Fuji X series, the quirks of WordPress to Roy’s index to Creative Camera, and Don McCullin to street photography in Cambridge.  The latter was illuminated by looking at David’s excellent new book of his work printed through Apple.  The print quality is first class and although the unit cost per book sounds high, as Roy said, it would be at least as expensive to get a set of prints to the same standard from any other source.

Roy has accepted the privilege (dubious?) of judging a photographic competition being set up by a church in Bury St Edmunds.  The theme is something to do with spires, but that’s yet to be properly defined.  Roy set David and me the challenge of making a portrait of him for use with the publicity.  This is one of my attempts – Roy chose one of the others to put on Facebook.

Photo: 1. BRH, Dave and Roy, Skylark Road, May 2018; 2. Roy Hammans, May 2018

I’m not sure if this arrangement on a footpath at Rampton Woods qualifies as a stile – a brief internet search brings up nothing similar.  It appears at first glance to be an ordinary three-bar fence, but the bars pivot about a pin in the off-central post to allow the left hand end to be depressed and stepped over (held down for the picture by J, out of shot).  Carefully cut chevron ended blocks at other end act as counter weights and return the bars to the horizontal when released.  A small plaque commemorates Brian Roberts.  Was he the designer and builder of this ingenious (unique?) well-crafted structure?  Note, dogs beware of the descending blocks.

Photo: Stile, Rampton Woods, Cambs, May 2018

The oak is called ‘the King of the forest’; the Celts honoured it for its endurance and noble presence and considered it a ‘cosmic storehouse of wisdom’.  ‘Heart of Oak’ is the official march of the Royal Navy; May 29th used to be celebrated in England as Oak Apple Day.  Hard and dense, the oak endures.  Cow parsley – it means an inferior version of real parsley – fills the woods and verges with frothy umbrels redolent of late spring.  Alternative vernacular names, Queen Anne’s lace, Lady’s lace, Fairy lace, Spanish lace, evoke its fragile appearance.  But it’s a deceptive fragility: it thrives thuggishly in good soils at the expense of other, more delicate wild flowers.  Seeding down, it too endures.

Photo: Rampton Woods, Cambs, May 2018

May has brought a spectacular blooming to the woods, orchards and hedgerows.  Apple trees have been dense pink Pavlova confections; and horse chestnuts seem to be decked with the votive candles of a whole year’s religious observances.  Above all the hawthorns are snow-laden with blossom, the fresh green leaves of first growth obscured by dense bunches of flowers.  Why such abundance this year?  Perhaps the consequence of a hard winter followed by a late, wet spring.  Whatever the reason, it’s an omen of a fruitful autumn: good news for apple eaters, conker players and haw-eating migrant birds.

Photo: Rampton Woods, Cambs, May 2018

“I want to create in my paintings a similar experience to an unfamiliar landscape being looked at for the first time, an uncertainty of what lies ahead, the puzzle that we undertake in trying to identify what belongs to the sky, what is water, what is the land and at what point they all meet. … My landscapes are influenced by places that I know and love, the North Norfolk coast…I am drawn to the endless beaches of Norfolk, the massive skies reflected in the huge canvases of its beaches.”  Melanie Max, The Old Fire Engine House Gallery, Ely May- July 2018

Photo: Wells, Norfolk, May 2018

Clouds above Wicken Fen mimic the flatness of the landscape where the world appears four fifths sky.   The remains of contrails, their artificiality as clouds also mirrors the artificiality of the landscape, whether the vast arable fields or Wicken’s fragile fen fragment kept viable for 9000 wildlife species by pumping water in.

Photo: Wicken Fen, May 2018

Aldeburgh Beach Lookout set up Pebble Homage as a participative art installation to coincide with Antony Gormley’s sculpture on top of the Martello Tower.  Visitors were invited to choose a pebble from the beach, think about life, and write a short thought on the pebble.  They will be scattered over the beach to be found by future generations or swept away by the sea.  Yesterday a German visitor found one on the table inscribed with a swastika; he took it and hurled it down the beach.

Photo: Pebble table, South Lookout, Aldeburgh, May 2018