Who was Fay Godwin?

Fay Godwin was renowned for her black and white landscape photographs of the British countryside and coast. She also produced a series of portraits of literary figures, with many of them being collaborated in her 1979 book ‘Remains of Elmet’.

Fay Godwin had no training when it came to photography, but rather became interested in it from photographs of her families snaps. From there she went on to produced portraits of well-known writers, photographing nearly every significant literacy figure in the 1970s and 1980s within England.

Later in the years her love of walking led to the inspiration to pursue landscape photography. She often photographed isolated, remote areas of the British landscape and producing many pastoral scenes as well as contrasting urban landscapes. Godwin became president of the Ramblers Association from 1987 to 1990, where she became well-known for her work as an environmentalist.

In 1987 Godwin was awarded a major Arts Council Bursary to enable her to continue her landscape work in distant parts of Scotland. Her work soon started to appear in many public and private collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, The British Council, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and many more. Originally her work began a world tour by the British Council, but later became a Fellow of the National Museum of Photography and in 1990 received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society.

Some of her work can be seen below:

As seen above Godwin focuses on very much of what is normal in the landscape, however she tends to use the weather to create more dramatic images to what would usually be seen, such as the clouds to create contrast on the land.