Background:

John Davies is a British landscape photographer and is most known for long term projects documenting Britain and areas of industrial building and showing the evolution of buildings and landscapes. Davies studied photography at Mansfield School of Art, then moved on to study at Trent Polytechnic. He was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2008.

Davies use of high vantage points gives his pictures a very unique feeling, and has inspired me to try and capture some images at higher altitudes, on top of hills, buildings, etc. to try and get a view of the surrounding areas, especially in and around town.

Image analysis:

This image by Davies stood out to me more than others as it shows the repetition that we face in modern life. Seeing the rows of houses trailing off into the distance is very impactful as you can see just how repetitive life is in the form of housing.

I find it interesting how all of the people living in these houses probably don’t realize just how similar their home is to everyone else’s around them, and although each house is different inside, with people obviously furnishing it to their liking and making it their own, from the outside everything is uniform and in order.

There is a strange sort of duality to the image that I find fascinating, as each house has its own story; some will be messy and contrasting the unvarying exteriors, where as others will be just as clean and pristine as the rows methodical layout of the buildings. However from the outside, you would never be able to tell which is which.

I find it alluring how coldly and systematically the houses were laid, simply due to the fact that a home is considered to be the most personal thing someone can have.  It is clear that the only reason the houses were made in this tightly packed, unoriginal way was for monetary value, but from this image, it makes the whole neighborhood look like a prison, especially with the buildings for mining in the background looking like guard towers, which gives the image a dark impression that something is wrong, like the whole town is trapped in this one tightly packed housing estate. Combine this with the freedom and spaciousness of the ocean in the background, and it once again, has this peculiar duality involving freedom and uniformity.