Fay Godwin

Fay Godwin, born in 1931, Berlin, is best known for her rural landscape photography. Growing up in many different countries, with a diplomat father and artist mother, and travelling most of her younger life, Godwin was conditioned to have a love for the arts from a young age. At the age of 21, Godwin had found a place to settle in London, where she worked at a publishers. This photographer’s fascination with photography first emerged in the 1960s, when she would often take pictures of her children, later looking at it as a more serious career choice. From this she started out as a freelance photographer, then moving on to selling her own books containing these countryside landscapes. It was Godwin’s book titled “Land” however, that gave her the most recognition, containing all her work from the past decade of her photography.

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Analysis

This atmospheric black and white photograph taken by Faye Godwin, displays a rural setting containing a valley, running through a mountain range. Leading lines in this image are created by the curved river, flowing in the foreground, drawing the viewers eyes towards the mountain range, in the background, slightly covered by mist. The jagged outlines of these mountains also aid the structure of this image, by gradually leading the viewers eye down into the valley. Here Godwin has clearly exhibited strong contrast between light and dark, with the luminous river highlighted by the sun, and the dark grassy lands that encompass it. These dark tones also contrast with the upper half of the image, past the horizon line, which contains light to mid-tones. There is a small amount of symmetry in this image, which is created with the center placement of the opening of the valley, seen in the background. It can also be said that the viewpoint in which this image was taken, was from head height due to the horizon line being in the center third of the photograph.

It is clear that the light used in order to take this photograph, was natural, created by a gentle, translucent haze over the mountains, as it is a rural landscape image, with no artificial light in the surroundings, as you might see in an urban landscape. It appears that Godwin took this image at midday, due to the evenly dispersed and soft light that does not create many harsh shadows in the landscape. For this Photograph Godwin most likely used a low aperture, allowing for a large depth of field, this is as the foreground and background in this landscape photograph have the same amount of focus on them. In addition, the shutter speed that Godwin used must have been on a fast setting due to the sharpness of the image. The ISO setting used to take this picture most likely was on a low setting, due to the large amount of light flooding the image, and highlighting the river.

As an avid walker, and a member of the Ramblers association, Godwin had great respect and admiration of nature and the preservation of it, even going as far as protesting for the cause. This later lead to her claiming that she was in fact a documentary photographer rather than a landscape photographer, stating that she acted as a reporter of the land. This appreciation can be seen in this image, as it can be said it the captures unbounded essence of the sublime and romantic genre, creating a photograph from a perspective, that allows you to be in awe of the grand scale of nature and its immense beauty.