Final Analysis
Fenced In Tree, Havenhill Dale 1981, by Paul Hill
Liberated from the shackles of large format photography and bounding from peak to peak in the Peaks with a 35mm camera in hand – that was the first vision I had of the photographer Paul Hill. I didn’t actually witness this for myself, of course, it was the impression I had in my mind’s eye. This was back in the late ’80s when I was studying photography and the school of thought, so I thought, with landscape photography was that it was rooted in the traditions of the grandmasters, such as Ansel Adams. While they were undoubtedly geniuses in their own right, Adams et al were also encumbered by the tyranny of tripods, the slow controls of large format cameras and the complicated calculations of the zone system and so on.
‘Punk’ aesthetic
So, Hill, using a 35mm camera and being free to roam unconstricted, revealed to me the landscape in ways that I hadn’t seen before. There was a certain ‘punk’ aesthetic, attitude and a whiff of antiestablishment that I found attractive. His work was more about ideas than capturing pretty chocolate box pictures. His images made a comment on us and on our relationship to the land.
‘A photograph that attempts to show simply how wonderful nature is, poses very few intellectual challenges,’ explained Hill to me recently who went on to tell me that he felt many camera users appeared to rely on the possession of expensive and sophisticated equipment for their reputation, rather than demonstrating their ability to make difficult intellectual judgements when taking pictures. Hill’s own career started as a news reporter and photojournalist and so I guess it was inevitable that he saw beyond the sweet veneer of a shallow vista and instead saw the landscape with an inquisitive and questioning eye.
Building on his way of seeing and looking at the world through a camera, Hill published an inspirational book in the 1980s called Approaching Photography and it hasn’t been out of print since. For many photographers, myself included, Hill’s wise words and images are an inspiration and have been a guiding beacon on myriad creative journeys. While the latest edition (due December 2020) has been updated to reflect modern technologies, at its core the lessons remain remarkably unchanged. I was reminded in the original introduction to
Hill’s book that ‘photography is not about focal lengths, film speeds and f-stops, it is about images: what you point your camera at, what you include within its viewfinder, what image you make into a print, and what context you place that photograph in.’
It’s perhaps not surprising that Hill has now been liberated from the tyranny of a clunky and unwieldy 35mm camera and if you look closely you’ll still see him leaping from peak to peak with a smartphone in his hand.
‘Paul Hill’s wise words and images are an inspiration and have been a guiding beacon on myriad creative journeys’