RECLAIMED
2018 - 2019
“The paradox is that it is much easier to imagine the end of life on earth than a much more modest change in capitalism”
Old Bedford River
RECLAIMED concludes Hart’s three-part series on The Fens in England. The trilogy, which began with FARMED (Dewi Lewis 2016) and DRAINED (Dewi Lewis 2018), has received considerable critical acclaim and won a number of international awards. In 2018 Hart was awarded the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize (Austria/UK) and in 2019 was shortlisted for the HARIBAN Award (Japan).
The Fens is a region of low-lying marshland in the east of England, which have 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. Paul Hart has photographed the area 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.
EXHIBITION PRINTS
RECLAIMED comprises 52 pictures available in limited editions :
Silver gelatin prints
Image sizes up to : 18 x 18 in / 46 x 46cm
Large-scale fibre based baryta prints :
40 x 40 in / 102 x 102 cm
Printed by Paul Hart
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
This Pleasant Land | Rosalind Jana (Hoxton Mini Press) 2022
Another County | Gerry Badger (Thames & Hudson/MPF) 2022
Monograph
RECLAIMED | Dewi Lewis Publishing
First edition 2020
Essay : Denatured Landscape by Isabelle Bonnet in French / English translation.
“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.”