John Davies Analysis.

John Davies is a English photographer from County Durham, England whose photographic work focuses a lot on documenting various rural and urban landscape in Ireland, Scotland and England as well as the human impact on these landscapes and the effects on society, using the formal elements of lighting, tones and compositions. For this artist analysis, I will be specifically looking at his landscape photography series titled 'British Isles' in response to the theme of 'Society' for this project. I decided to research the work of John Davies in relation to this theme as I intend to take a series of photographs that document the urban society that I live in and around - such as Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley - and the impact that we have on our society such as graffiti, street art and the general lack of care we show our society and the environments that we live in as well as the constant changes that we are making to them. This is something that I felt inspired by whilst researching and analysing the work of John Davies as I really like the gritty style his photographs gain through the heavy contrast of monochromatic tones and the way that the artist documents changes within the landscape by returning to the same place in different years to document the changes within his photographs. This could therefore be an editing style and photographic method that I could take inspiration from and reference within my own photographic responses to this project.

Many of John Davies' photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds and long distance
compositional angles in order to document the rural and urban landscapes and the impact that we have on our society. Since John Davies' work is based on creating a series of landscape-based photographs of rural and urban environments in Ireland, Scotland and England that may or may not have been affected by human life and nature, the artist takes a lot of photographs of these landscapes in order to capture the natural and manmade beauty of them as well as the changes that have been made to the same landscape over the years.

A lot of the photographs that John Davies has taken in order to create his project are based around various rural and urban landscapes and the natural and manmade beauty of the landscape that he is documenting within his work. He often focuses a lot of his photographic work on the uses of natural lighting, tones, leading lines and changes to the environments that he documents within his photographs. By documenting the same society and landscape within his photographs helps to show the changes being made as the impact that we all have on the societies that we live in as well as the passage of time within his photographic work, this in turn creates a bold focal point within his work and draws his target audience's attention to the landscape within the monochrome photographs through the use of leading line compositions - created by the roads and rivers that are documented within the imagery that John Davies creates. This is something that I could potentially take inspiration from within my own landscape photographic work responding to the theme of 'Society' by documenting photographs of the same society based landscape at different times during the day to show the changes that have happened over the span of a few hours.

Within my own photographic responses I have decided to take a series of landscape photographs that will document the theme of 'Society' by photographing the different urban environments of Croydon, Kingston, London and Bromley and the damages and lack of care humans have for their own society within my photographs, focusing on the grit and grime that the city and town landscapes may have such as graffiti, street art and damages to buildings and the like as well as the changes that we are often making to our own society such as construction sites and the demolishment of buildings.