Caroline Tollyfield with a copy of Tributary, one of three books she has self-published.. Photograph © Eddie Ephraums
Linda Lashford
With the highly topical workshop, Photography and the Environment drawing near (March 2-8, 2020), we invited two OSW regulars, Caroline Tollyfield and Sandy Wotton, to consider its central theme.
Knowing them both as photographers and as book-makers, it was fascinating to hear their very personal reflections on how the environment inspires their imagery and story telling. What struck me was how a narrowing of focus and a growing photographic intimacy with a place or subject deepened their understanding. For Caroline, this has been a journey: “My geographical range narrowed to one small part of the Hampshire countryside and I began to see things differently, to notice details, observe changes and ask questions”. We see the results in her collection of photo-books, Songpost, Tributary and Common Joy. Although not overtly campaigning, her sensitive prose and lyrical photography explore complex environmental relationships and the power of landscape to loosen thought and free imagination.
——-
Caroline: To me, the environment is the space around me: the air that I breathe, the ground under my feet and the web of life in between. It's the context and setting for my experience of a particular place and the source of my creative inspiration as a photographer.
What I've come to realise is that my response to the environment has altered over the years and this has changed the sort of photographs I take. It has also changed the reasons why I take photographs. For years, I tried to capture the wonderful landscapes I was lucky enough to visit in locations from Namibia to Iceland, enjoying the challenge and not thinking much about what I was doing. Then my geographical range narrowed to one small part of the Hampshire countryside and I began to see things differently, to notice details, observe changes and ask questions. I began to value the simple experience of exploring my environment, immersed in its sights and sounds. Gradually my photographs started to reflect how I felt to be in a particular place rather than being a classic depiction of what the place looked like. I learned to recognise some birdsong and to identify different tree species. I made field notes and, tentatively, began to write down the thoughts inspired by my environment.
The environment has become a personal source of wonder and inspiration. Wanting to share this enjoyment with others, I now make hand-sewn photo books based on my outdoor explorations. I hope to pass on these simple pleasures and strike a chord that might encourage others to take a closer look at the natural world around them and value it more.
I realise, of course, that sharing a few photo books isn't enough to change the world. Somehow I want to find a way to use my photography to help the environment more effectively, because the environment – our environment – is our life-support system and its health is now a source of concern. The damage we've done to the air, soil, water, oceans, climate and biodiversity is now so significant that we must act to put things right.
I've been thinking about what I – as a photographer – can do to help, in addition to all the personal and political actions I can take just like any other citizen. It seems to me that, whatever our individual creative styles, photographers are all essentially communicators, using images to convey the world around us and to tell stories. So from now on, whenever I step outside with my camera, I will be on the lookout for subjects that help to communicate our environmental emergency. Working out what to photograph won’t be easy. Trying to engage and influence busy people on a subject as difficult as this is challenging. Too much 'doom and gloom' can be off-putting. I'm not alone in wondering what to do: The Guardian newspaper has recently revised its views on the best imagery for climate journalism, now recommending images that 'make the story relevant to the individual', for example by showing the 'direct impact of environmental issues on people's daily lives'. We can also illustrate the positive stories of people who are working on solutions to the environment's problems.
I have been inspired by the sensitive story-telling in Rhiannon Adam’s photographic project on fracking in the UK, as well as by the passion and hope conveyed by Isabella Tree’s writing on the rewilding of the Knepp Estate in West Sussex. My local Wildlife Trust in Hampshire has just launched a bold programme encouraging us all to make our local environment wilder, in order to restore wildlife habitats, biodiversity, and spaces for people to relax. I will take some 'before and after' photographs in my own garden, and share them locally. It may seem like a small gesture but it’s a start and perhaps I can inspire others to get involved. At some point, of course, I may find myself in the right place at the right time to take a powerful environmental image that resonates more widely, perhaps even makes it into the national media. In the meantime, I’m happy to start small. If we were all to put our photographic skills to good use in support of the environment, whether locally or nationally, together we could spread the message that change is not only necessary but possible.
——-
Sandy is also a talented book-maker, who loves to express herself through both writing and visual imagery. In her piece, we see the environment as space that is critical to her well-being, a place for contemplation and a repository of memory. And in her evocation of the soaring magenta spires of Rosebay willowherb, I am there with her, running the soft, silken tips through my own childhood fingers, releasing them in magical, pillowed flight. A reminder that the loss of even the most undervalued species is a small catastrophe.
Sandy: Wildflowers were my passion as a youngster and at that time it was still acceptable to pick and press them between sheets of blotting paper to create a collection. Now, quite rightly, such potentially destructive behaviour is frowned upon. I still collect wildflowers but these days I ‘take’ only photographs of the living plants in their natural environments. My camera is always with me; it aids my observation, curiosity, contemplation and appreciation of much wider worlds than my own. Often, when feeling restless or troubled, I head outdoors for a solitary walk, camera in hand but with no intention in mind. Sometimes I don’t take a single photograph but the time spent in a natural setting is enjoyable, calming and essential to my sense of wellbeing. Other times I return revitalised, excited by my explorations and the creative potential of the photos I have taken.
My favourite wildflower is the Rosebay willowherb, which was abundant in the green spaces of London surburbia where I grew up. It was even more prolific on the remaining WW2 bomb sites in the East End of London where my grandparents lived. There it was known as Fireweed or Bombweed because it was the first to colonise burnt ground or bombed out areas. It was also called London’s Ruin or, more hopefully, London’s Pride as its tall spikes of vivid magenta flowers soared upwards to lift war weary spirits. Moving to Scotland 21 years ago, I was surprised to discover that in Clydebank, on the edge of Glasgow, it was known as Singer Weed since it had grown profusely on the site of the Singer Sewing Machine Factory that was also bombed in the war.
Rosebay willowherb, known locally as ‘Singer Weed’ at the bombed out Glasgow Singer Sewing machine factory. Photograph © Sandy Wotton
It’s a plant of many colours changing with the seasons: fast growing seas of green in the early spring; forests of magenta flowers with blue pollen, beloved of insects through the summer; in early autumn long pink seedpods, turning brown and splitting to shed clouds of white parasols to the breeze, each bearing a tiny seed aloft; and finally, tall stems of fiery red leaves lasting into the early winter. It’s a great survivor, not only propagating by seed but also through rhizomes spreading underground and earning it the reputation of an invasive weed. It amuses me that a ‘weed’ is often defined as a wildflower that’s growing in the wrong place, yet I believe that Fireweed grows in just the right places, bringing colour to wasted ground, railway embankments, roadsides and ruins. I like to think of nature fighting back, of vegetation slowly engulfing and degrading the hard angles of derelict buildings and breaking through the solid surfaces of disused tarmac. Perhaps, it is fanciful to think of so called ‘weeds’ healing the wounds and scars that humans have inflicted on the environment, but I feel it goes a small way towards redressing the creative/destructive balance.
As a teenager living under the threat of nuclear annihilation and dismayed by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, I briefly thought about a career in the relatively new science of ecology.
In her landmark book, Carson highlighted how gross contamination of our environment with pesticides, insecticides and herbicides was to the immediate detriment of wildlife in general and, paradoxically, a major threat to our own survival as a species. Few listened then, partly due to our arrogance in regarding natural resources as inexhaustible and ourselves as above nature rather than a part of it.
I didn’t pursue a career as an ecologist but 50 years later, on one of my local walks along a section of the West Highland Way, which in summer, is lined with Rosebay willowherb, I came across a very sorry specimen. It was grotesquely fascinating; the flower spike was brought low by the weight of a fringe of undeveloped, ill-defined flower buds at its tip and the stem itself was flattened to an inch wide ribbon bearing tiny aborted leaves and buds. I could hardly bear to take the photograph. I guessed it was damage from a drift of herbicidal spray from the adjacent field and later discovered that the likely culprit (2, 4-D) is one of the earliest developed and still most commonly used of selective herbicides. Bizarrely it kills broadleaved plants through accelerating their growth uncontrollably but narrow-leaved plants such as cereal crops and grasses do not respond in the same way. The direct effects on humans are relatively minor and yet I was horrified to discover that it was developed in secret during WW2 as part of a programme to find herbicides that would kill rice and potato crops and thereby starve Japan and Germany into submission. Although, 2,4-D was never used for this (it was ineffective), it was one of the (less harmful) ingredients of Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam war. Before her death in 1964, Rachel Carson wrote in support of an ecological ethic:
“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the Earth and in contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility”.
Looking again at my photograph I notice a few distorted flowers, still magenta, still with pollen and still able to attract an insect or two; there are even a few seedpods, although whether they contained fertile seeds I can’t tell. I can only hope that Rosebay willowherb will continue to survive for our contemplation; perhaps we can wonder at its beauty and learn a little humility.
——-
If you have any articles you would like to contribute or news you would like to share, such as books you are publishing or exhibitions you are working on, that are relevant to the OSW community, then please do email Linda or myself:
Email OSW editorial: