Paul Hart

Paul Hart's new book Reclaimed concludes his three-part series on The Fens in the UK. The first two books Farmed (2016) and Drained (2018) have received several international awards and considerable critical acclaim. In 2018 work from the series was awarded the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize (Austria/UK) and in 2019 it was shortlisted for the Hariban Award (Japan).

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.

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 allows 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.

As the respected French curator and writer Isabelle Bonnet states in her insightful introductory essay; "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... 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."

The Fens, a region of reclaimed marshland in eastern England, is one of the richest arable areas in the UK. It is a landscape of agribusiness that Paul Hart has been photographing for over eight years. In Drained, he continues the exploration of this wide-open environment which he began with Farmed, the first in a planned series of three books about the region.

This is a linear landscape of straight lines and flat horizons, with monoculture at it's core. Hart's narrative pinpoints the objects that remain when all that surrounds has been cleared by modern agricultural practice. He conveys nature's vulnerability within this unsheltered, unprotected environment. Hart's working method is in the vein of documentary, exploring our relationship to the landscape by highlighting elements that are so often overlooked. He employs the analogue process and traditional darkroom techniques, to convey something of the soulful in a landscape.

The Fens, a region of reclaimed marshland in eastern England, is one of the richest arable areas in the UK. Hart has been photographing this landscape of agribusiness over the last six years. He explores this wide-open environment, a linear landscape of straight lines and flat horizons, which is monoculture at it’s core.

The forest interior is more architecture than landscape. Amongst the trees, your concept of time is changed. As you move deeper inside, and the outside world disappears, the wind is calmed and noise filtered, temperature is altered, and light is bounced and subdued.

Some trees stand like sentinels, others are stolid in ranks, an army of trees appearing out of the dark. This apparent sanctuary of stillness can strangely transform. It is it s own world. Stepping into the forest is always like stepping into the unknown, with the semi-dark concealing much, revealing a little. A place sometimes mysterious, sometimes secretive, but always seductive and always dark.