This photographer was chosen by the creator of the whole exhibition event Gareth Syvret. Jem Southam is a landscape photographer who makes rural landscape images used as a way to document man’s intervention in nature. Something that Southam does is photograph the same locations over months and years to show the difference that mankind has made in such a short period of time. Southam has photographed places across England. Southam was born in Bristol in 1950 and is one of the UK’s leading photographers.

Jem Southam on Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/artist/jem-southam

“I became heavily influenced by the Bechers, and pursued architectural landscape work.” – Jem Southam [interview with Seesaw Magazine]

Overview | What I think

After having a look at Jem Southam’s work I have actually been quite inspired by how beautiful his images look. I think that they are all effortlessly beautiful images and I also like the way that Southam makes images of the same locations over a period of months and years, this is really interesting and shows how we are constantly changing as a society and how much people can effect the way the natural world is and looks. I find it so interesting that Southam makes images from the same locations and tends to stick to around the same area when usually quite a lot of photographers will travel around to a load of different locations and places. I do think that Southam is working on a huge project to make images of the same places which will give the most effect in years to come when spectators will be able to see how much has changed and how much people have changed it.

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Q. How does the work of Jem Southam reflect the way we are as a society?

In this essay I will reflect on how much our society can be changed and re-moulded just by the environment we are living in and how much manmade objects change even the natural world.
Firstly, I really like the work of Jem Southam as it is really visually pleasing and interesting as the natural beauty of the images is really intriguing to look at. I can really relate to this work as growing up I always found the beauty in the natural environment around me like around an area where Liberty Warf and the office buildings are now. I had so many memories of playing and running around with my friends along there and memories with my family just from that patch of grass but now it seems that all those memories have been taken from me with the creation of offices and shops. I find that we live in a world that wants to become a lot more corporate and we tend to forget about the natural world and how beautiful it was before humans inhabited it. This is why I like to look at the work of Jem Southam so much as I feel that I can personally relate to it.
Another way that Southam’s work reflects our society is that his images are so simple yet is really interesting.
Secondly, I chose this mini set of images above as I found them really interesting. It looks so lovely and almost like a fairytale book, where you would expect a fiction character or someone to live. I like that there is one house in the far distance on the left hand side of the image as it shows how much the natural world rules over this part of the countryside but it also shows how our buildings and our society have moulded themselves and pushed into the natural world making more of a manmade one. This image interests me as I want to find out more and see what that particular location looks like in  a couple of years and to see whether or not the natural beauty is still there or if the corporate world has taken over. To me Southam’s work represents the greed of people and how much we seem to benefit from creating more and more corporate and unnatural environments just to make a bit of money. It really is fascinating to think about the lengths people will actually go to in order to make money, even destroy the natural habitat of so much wildlife, creates and just natural beauty and plants.
I really like the work of Southam as it is so interesting and he somehow makes his images look really beautiful even though the message is showing how much man has changed the way our world looks. Southam seems to make images more in the woodland areas or around the coastline to show how different these places may look after months and years. I think that Southam’s work reflects our society in somewhat of a beautiful and positive light with all of his images being visually pleasing and almost magical looking, however the meaning behind these images is a really strong one showing how much society has changed and how quickly we are expanding in the world and how much the populations are growing that we have to go into natures territory and claim it for our own.