Caves

I have been exploring the North Devon coast for the last three years. My study is of the hidden coast found only through a vertiginous climb down a cliff path or by leaving the sandy beach and trekking over seaweed strewn boulders at low tide. This is a wild coast, unpopulated by holiday-makers, the domain of seagulls that can make you feel quite unwelcome. It is also an historic coast where the rhythms and cycles of millions of years can be seen in the layers of strata of an eroded cliff face and the more recent past can be found in smooth rusting ship parts, in memorial of hundreds of wrecks, littering the rocky shore.

These photographs have only been made possible through the technology of digital imaging. I have embraced this new medium and challenged it to assist with the documenting of what is seen at the back of a cave. To most, the inside of a cave is black and the bright surface world is pictured through a heavy dark frame; but here we see the glorious true colour and texture through long exposure of the subject. These images are often made up of in excess of fifty separate photographs, of different exposure, angle of view and framing; to gain the detail from the deepest blacks to the brightest highlights in this extremely high contrast scene. PhotoShop is then the computer programme of choice, for stitching the images together. This process can take days to complete and it is not uncommon for me to finish a new image a year of more after taking the original photographs.

“It should be said at the outset that the new work is a continuation of those years of production using photo-computer processes and materials as the artist explores and celebrates natural form and landscape in North Devon where he now lives and works. Some changes are apparent however as the artist and the work develops and the recent images finds the artist literally getting inside his subject matter in a fascinating and exciting way which I believe marks a new found sensibility and sensuality in his approach. The recent pieces can be seen as marking an important psychological/aesthetic shift in consciousness towards images that are darker, more intimate, covert and subterranean. Here what is exposed is less obvious, less accessible, that which is waiting to be discovered. In this work the artist takes us inside in a way which suggests a greater intimacy and a stronger recognition and celebration of the feminine, the mysterious, the hidden.

These images, which immediately command our attention, are taken from within caves along the North Devon shoreline with colours that are muted and sombre, mostly blues, browns, black and grey, darker images punctuated at the centre by a startling light from outside. They could be taken as strongly suggestive of birth experiences, of looking out towards the light perhaps from the birth canal. They can also be seen as evocative of (reported) ‘near death' experiences where bright, dazzling lights are glimpsed at the end of a dark tunnel. The glittering rich texture of rock inside is lit by the wonderfully strong light from outside. These images could be seen to have strong sexual connotation also and it has been suggested that they represent the female experience of receptivity and of waiting. Certainly there is an echo of the archetype here with the velvety richness, the dark and the intimacy of the female body and its sexual creative function.”
- Peter Berry, extract from ‘Images from Within' September 2006

Dame Hole

Dame Hole, the name given on an OS map, not my own, is situated on the Hartland peninsula equidistant between Hartland Point and Quay (and the first picture in the slideshow above). It is a narrow tunnel, barely wide enough to squeeze through, inside the castle-like finger of rock, clawing out into the Atlantic, Dame Hole Point. At high tide most of the cave is filled with the sea, and the parts not underwater are hammered by the swell. I had attempted to photograph this cave many times before but the lack of light and the darkness of the matt stone surface had left me unhappy with the results. On September 6th 2006, I entered Dame Hole again. On this occasion whilst the tide was just receding, I intended to capture a still wet hole, fresh from the high tide. Hopping from boulder to boulder and hoping not to be caught out by a larger wave, I squeezed inside and positioned my monopod and camera. 25 pictures were taken in total, each one of a different part of the symmetrical ribbed organic structure, focusing for each shot and adjusting the exposure to blend the extreme brightness from outside with the deep dark of the interior. The smooth, seamless joining of the different layers of images on the computer, through PhotoShop, took months, and this finished print was made for the Appledore Visual Arts Festival in June 2007.

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