An outstanding archive of rural Britain
James Ravilious started work for the Beaford Centre, recording the society of this inaccessible and largely unchanged part of Devon. Seventeen years and 75,000 photographs later the project was closed. Ravilious’s pictures now form the major part of the archive, a unique record of the everyday life of the area. Nothing is missed. by that photographer’s skill and concentration on the subject matter of ordinary life. He saw that it was transformed into art. More ominously, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he kept at bay for 30 years.
Two years after their wedding in 1972, the compulsory purchase of their London flat forced a move and they decided to live in Addisford, a small, thatched cottage belonging to Robin. Fortuitously, John Lane, the prescient director of the Beaford Centre, inspired by artists such as Thomas Hennell and the writer H. W. Massingham, offered James the post of photographer for the Beaford Centre’s archive. As recorder of an old-fashioned, traditional England, Ravilious was an inspired choice. Emulating CartierBresson by using a Leica camera for black and white images, he produced natural, unsentimental pictures, each of which is a work of art.
He achieved this by being part of the country society he photographed, Robin and he being as poor as most of their neighbours, and by his heredity. He was diffident but would talk with anyone, and his honesty and likeable charm won trust and hearts. A picture of a French family exemplifies this: he had met them for the first time just a couple of hours earlier, yet he was invited home and took the photograph as if he were invisible. Conversely, he would wait for hours to obtain the right picture; patience brought great rewards.
Despite their naturalness his pictures show a debt to other artists: Morland, Peter Breughel and Samuel Palmer. Like Palmer, Ravilious makes a paradise, not just of landscape but of human normality within it and that is his mastery. The camera can lie, however, some of the rough edges being absent; a video of some of his subjects demonstrated the ubiquity of four-letter words. No camera can show that.
These two books complement each other: The Recent Past displays beautifully reproduced photographs by Ravilious, while his widow’s biography is a moving tribute which details the technical as well as aesthetic side of his work. A nit-pick: why are the same pictures published so frequently? No doubt there are reasons of ownership and copyright, but it would be good to extend the variety to include more of those he classified as ‘best’.
Cancer returned to Ravilious and he died at the early age of 60 in his beloved Devon. Other photographers have followed his style and methods, but he remains the master.
By arrangement with the Spectator