Jem Southam

• Stanley Barker 2022
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New
  

“In the middle of a December night a few years ago I was woken by the phone ringing downstairs. Nothing ever good comes of such a call and this time it was news that my younger brother had been admitted to hospital, and the doctor caring for him had rung to say he thought it unlikely he would live through the night. I drove to see him and sat with him through the early hours, in the eerie quiet of the emergency ward, until late in the morning when it appeared he would pull through.”

“When I got home that afternoon I decided to go for a walk by the river. As the dark of the dusk gradually gathered I sat on a log to sift through the thoughts and emotions of the day. Gradually I became absorbed in what was in front of me; the turbulence of the streams surface as the water raced around the bend, the waving of the reeds and the branches of the overhanging tree, and the pink of the clouds being pushed across the sky by a south-westerly breeze. When mallard ducks pushed out from the bank to swim across the river in search of a safe haven for the night, I picked up the small digital camera I had just started to use and quickly took a picture.”

"In the middle of another night, a couple of years after the first call, the phone rang again, with the same message. I went off to the hospital once more to sit by Andy’s side, however that time he did not make it through. As I write this on the cusp of the Spring Equinox in 2021, I have just come to the end of another season by the river – The Fifth Winter. It is hard to stop, such are the profound pleasures of witnessing and sharing the quiet wonders of a winter’s morning, on a bend in the river. ”

- Jem Southam

 For the past four winters the English artist Jem Southam has repeatedly visited a short stretch of riverbank along the floodplain of the River Exe. He stands and watches, as the dusk fades into darkness or as the light of dawn gathers, witnessing the different passage of each winter. In the evenings, long past sunset, swans, geese and ducks arrive on the river to spend the night in safety. In the mornings the birds wake, preen, feed and socialise as they prepare for the new day.

These periods of subtle drama have played out continuously for millennia, as the world spins and each new day dawns the spectacle repeats itself. However, it is endlessly varied, and in the photographs in this book, Jem Southam notates and narrates the subtle shifts and dramas of the theatrical space around him.  

• Mack 2018
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

The Moth derives from one black-and-white picture that Jem Southam made in about 1983: a solitary man standing on Gwithian beach in St Ives, Cornwall. From this singular, meditative moment, the book of otherwise unpeopled, colour photographs unravels like a succession of memories, drifting back and forth through time. Over the course of 30 years, Southam intermittently returned to the west of Cornwall to explore a place steeped in marine and mining history, and in the mythology of Celtic saints who exiled to Cornish shores. His poetic sequence of images, inspired by the alliterative verse of the old English poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer, moves from vistas of meadows to water streams, forgotten homes and farm dogs awaiting their food. Now and then, Southam’s fluctuating current of pictures is punctuated by a sublime moment in the rural landscape, only to be eclipsed by the hazy memory of The Moth.

Signed copy.

• Imagebeeld 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 104p
• New

The pond at Upton Pyne formed at the site of an eighteenth-century manganese mine.

Located on land owned by a local family who were involved in the mining venture, the first excavations began in March 1788. It was originally an open-cast mine employing just a few men who worked with ladders, picks, shovels, horses and carts. The quality of the ore in the load was rich, and once refined it was shipped from Exeter Quay to London and Bristol, where it was used predominantly in the production of glass. After a bright start the output of the mine steadily diminished and by 1823 it had ceased production, leaving a large pit, shallow on the east side near the road and becoming deeper towards the west, where it is overhung by a cliff.

Known locally as ‘The Black Pit’, it gradually filled with water to form a pond. Within living memory the land around the pond had been used to keep the village pigs and to grow vegetables. However, over the years, as so many relics of the Industrial Revolution, it became increasingly derelict, full of discarded household goods, a car, farm and garden waste and fallen trees.

This is a story in three parts. The first two are built around the three-year cycles of the two projects to improve the pond. The third is a short epilogue that places the site in a wider geographic perspective.

The pictures present a collection of histories. Within the broad sweep of time they encompass a thousand years of a large estate on the borders of a city that has since Roman times been a regional capital; the comings and goings of the Industrial Revolution; the decline of agricultural life with the advent of modern farming; and the urbanisation of village life.

Within the span of the six years the pond had risen and fallen, trees had collapsed while others grew, herons and a kingfisher had returned, the roof of the shed adjacent to the pond had fallen in, the collection of farm machinery had grown, and the number of ducks living in and around the pond had significantly increased.

Running as threads through the work are the myths that pervade our imaginations and motivate so many of our actions; and the wonder at what we too might leave behind.

Edition of 500 copies.

Signed copy.