Who is he?

Alexander Mourant is an artist, educator and writer based in London. His first publication, The Night and the First Sculpture, was published by Folium, 2024. He has since been commissioned by FT Weekend Magazine, Hapax Magazine and The Greatest Magazine, and included in BJP, The Guardian, Photograph, Photoworks, METAL Magazine and Photomonitor. He won the Free Range Award and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award. Mourant is a Member of Revolv Collective and Contributor at C4 Journal. He achieved BA Photography at Falmouth University, and MA Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He is a Lecturer in Photography at Kingston University.

This is one of his most famous photos from his collection ‘Aurelian’ which explores the interior space of British butterfly houses. To get the colour blue he has taken a piece of blue glass  from a church window and had it specially cut to fit the lens of his camera. this meant that all the pictures he took were blue.

Alexander Mourant is an artist, educator and writer based in London. His first publication, The Night and the First Sculpture, was published by Folium, 2024.

His recent exhibitions include To Walk in the Image, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2023), At the Farthest Edge: Rebuilding Photography, NŌUA, Norway (2023) and A Sudden Vanishing, Seen Fifteen Gallery, London (2023).

Mourant is a recipient of grants from Arts Council Norway, Arts Council England and ArtHouse Jersey. He won the Free Range Award and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huf Award.

He achieved BA Photography at Falmouth University, and MA Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He is a Lecturer in Photography at  Kingston University.

A Famous Collection

This collection is called Aomori. This was all taken in Japan and was taken with a blue stained glass window from a church.

Aomori means blue forest in Japanese.

This image was part of The Night And The First sculpture, which was published in a book .

Les Quennevais estates, St Aubin’s, First tower, Springfield, Town, FB fields, Gorey, Beaumont.

HDP Photoshoot

I’m an artist, educator, writer and Lecturer on BA (Hons) Photography at Kingston School of Art. My practice embraces autobiography, literature and reference-based thinking, to create narratives that question the relationship between the body and the photographic medium. I work with photography, writing, performance and sculpture, employing methodologies cultivated by the 1960s-70s Land Art movement, Performance and Arte Povera, to help question, or push, our understanding of the photographic.

Alexander Mourant is an artist, educator and writer based in London. His first publication, The Night and the First Sculpture, was published by Folium, 2024. Recent exhibitions include To Walk in the Image, Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2023), At the Farthest Edge: Rebuilding Photography, NŌUA, Norway (2023) and A Sudden Vanishing, Seen Fifteen Gallery, London (2023). Mourant is a recipient of grants from Arts Council Norway, Arts Council England and Arthouse Jersey. He has been commissioned by FT Weekend Magazine, Hapax Magazine and The Greatest Magazine, and included in BJP, The Guardian, Photograph, Photo works, METAL Magazine and Photo monitor. He won the Free Range Award and was nominated for the Foam Paul Huff Award. Mourant is a Member of Revolve Collective and Contributor at C4 Journal. He achieved BA Photography at Falmouth University, and MA Photography at Royal College of Art, London. He is a Lecturer in Photography at Kingston University.

Alexander Mourant, born in Jersey, Channel Islands, in 1994, is a London-based artist, educator, and writer renowned for his innovative exploration of photography. He earned a BA (Hons) in Photography from Falmouth University in 2017 and completed an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in 2020.

Mourant’s artistic practice delves into the relationship between the body and the photographic medium, intertwining autobiography, literature, and reference-based thinking. He employs methodologies inspired by the 1960s-70s Land Art movement, Performance, and Arte Povera to challenge and expand the boundaries of photography.

His work has been showcased in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Notable solo exhibitions include “Aomori” at The Old Truman Brewery in London (2018) and at Unseen Amsterdam (2018). Recent group exhibitions feature “To Walk in the Image” at Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2023), “At the Farthest Edge: Rebuilding Photography” at NŌUA, Norway (2023), and “A Sudden Vanishing” at Seen Fifteen Gallery, London (2023). ​

In addition to his exhibitions, Mourant published his debut monograph, “The Night and the First Sculpture,” in 2024. His work has been featured in various publications, including the British Journal of Photography, AINT-BAD, The Plantation Journal, Pylot Magazine, and TRIP Magazine

Beyond his artistic endeavors, Mourant serves as a Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Photography program at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University London. His contributions to the field have been recognized with grants from Arts Council Norway, Arts Council England, and ArtHouse Jersey. ​

Mourant’s work continues to push the boundaries of photographic art, inviting audiences to reconsider the medium’s potential and its intersection with personal and collective narratives.​

To take these images I went down to Gorey Pier and took some images of the scenery and the man made structures . This photoshoot was a way to show the comparison of nature in juxtaposition to man-made structures.

Contact Sheet

Edited Images

These are the images I used to make my joiner photo. These are the edited versions of the images I used.

Joiner

For this joiner. I used photoshop, since I could do it manually.

Panorama

This is how I edited to make a panorama.

This is my panorama , but I filled the edges and made it spherical.

Contact sheet:

I got the chance to try and recreate the feel of Romanticism through landscape photography. While I was at the reservoir, I took around 250 photos, making sure to cover different areas of the place. I really focused on capturing the natural beauty, so I avoided including any buildings or man-made structures in the shots. This made it tricky at times because there were parts of the reservoir that I just couldn’t photograph without having something modern in the frame, like a bridge or a trail. It was a bit frustrating, but it made me think more about where I was shooting and what I was capturing. I had to be picky and really find those spots where nature felt untouched.

My best shots:

After going through all the pictures, I picked the ones I thought had the most potential for editing. At first, I chose 53 photos, but I’m planning to narrow it down even further. I’ll aim to end up with 3 to 5 solid shots that I can really focus on editing and polishing. The goal is to pick the ones that best capture the feel I’m going for without overcomplicating things. I’m looking for the images that will really pop after some editing.

I’ve since cut it down to 11 photos, which gives me a more manageable selection to work with. I also color-coded them to help me keep track of which ones I think are the best for editing. It just makes it easier to visually see which ones I like the most. I’m aiming to refine these even more and really bring out the details that could make them look even better.

Now, I’ve settled on 3 photos that I think are the strongest. I’ve marked them green to show they stand out the most and have the most potential for editing and color grading. These 3 are the ones I’ll focus on, making sure they’re as sharp and vibrant as possible. Once I get these right, I’ll be happy with the final result.

These final 3 photos represent the shots I feel best capture the essence of the landscape I wanted to portray. After carefully reviewing and narrowing down my collection, I chose these because they stand out the most in terms of composition, lighting, and how well they convey the natural beauty of the reservoir. Each one has its own unique qualities, from the way the light plays across the water to the dramatic contrast between the elements of nature. I believe these images have the most potential for editing, and I’m excited to take them through the process to really enhance their impact. These will be the key photos that help showcase the Romanticism-inspired vision I’ve been working towards.

Recently me and my class did a whole class photo walk around Harve Depas, I collected a total of 391 images, this included photos to use for a panorama, landscapes but also some urban landscapes.

Artist analysis

Frank Gohlke

Frank Gohlke, born on April 3, 1942, is a prominent American landscape photographer. He has received two Guggenheim fellowships, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Fulbright Scholar Grant. His photography is part of many prestigious collections, including those at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Gohlke was among ten photographers chosen for the influential 1975 exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape,” held at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, which is now known as the George Eastman Museum. Over his nearly fifty-year career, Gohlke has captured images of grain elevators in the American Midwest, the destruction caused by a tornado in his hometown of Wichita Falls, Texas, the transformation of the landscape around Mount St. Helens after its 1980 eruption, agricultural scenes in central France, and the wild apple forests in Kazakhstan.

Some of his photos

Photo analysis

Technical – The lighting in this image is most likely natural light, its gloomy dark and cold setting, there isn’t any shadows due to the cloudy sky. The aperture was most likely a high number, something like f/32, I can tell this because everything is in focus while still being a wide angle shot.

Visual – In the foreground of this photo there is some silos, they reflect nicely off the wet road they sit on. Moreover the powerlines make good leading lines towards the vanishing point of the image which is down the end of the road, this is also where the viewers eyes are drawn to.

Contextual/ Conceptual – Grain Elevator and Lightning Flash, Lamesa, Texas, 1975.

Contact sheet

Selection process

Panoramas

I took a range of photos which I merged into one to create a panorama

My favourite photos

Basic editing

Black and white

in this photo there is the reflection of lines of the tower and the trees making a repetitive pattern on the sea.

These are my photos from Harve des par, I’ve edited all of them to make them black and white therefore they all look the same this way my photos look neat and organised.

Photo evaluation:

The lighting in all these photos is natural as it was during the day time however I have changed the photos from natural to black and white as it still shows good tones between the light and dark areas.

“Topographic” refers to the features of a surface, like mountains, valleys, rivers, and hills. It shows the shape, size and details of the land in a specific area, most of the time it’s done on an map but our goal when taking topographic photos is to capture features in there full detail.

New Topographics was a term created by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams, Hilla Becher and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar aesthetic.

The photographs were all images of non-idealized landscapes, a mundane American town and repetitive suburban areas, anonymous “strip” malls, one and two-story structures along highways, liminal urban areas each bearing witness to a potential social critique. 

Here are some image examples:

Here is a photo from Robert Adams titled “Enriched Emulsion”

Here is a photo by Lewis Baltz titled “Absence Of Style”

Here is a collection of photos by Hilla Becher titled “Preparation Plants”