"To view the landscape as a pictorial composition of elements is simplistic. To perceive the landscape within a set of rules (art, science, politics, religion, community, business, industry, sport and leisure) is a way people can deal with the complexity of meanings that are presented in our environment. We are collectively responsible for shaping the landscape we occupy and in turn the landscape shapes us whether we are aware of it or not." John Davies

Narrative landscape photographer, John Davies, captures the British landscape in a permanent state of flux. His black and white photographs, taken between 1979 and 2005 show the vast, complex and majestic scenery of industrial and post industrial Britain. He establishes centred and classical geometries within his unique vision that take on an almost magical and mystical appeal. His works are coolly detached and highly seductive in their display of rare moments of calm and quiet amidst the inevitable change of these modern landscapes.

The British landscape is particularly shaped by human endeavour and these photographs show the seams and layers of information left behind by time. Davies’ use of black and white, free from the distraction of colour, gives the work an impression of permanence and lends the monumental to otherwise banal details of the rural and urban landscape. Taken from an elevated position, these photographs show not an idealised countryside but a middle state, both rural and urban, constantly reinvented by trends in industry, agriculture and construction - each view in itself a fabrication. Davies’ temporarily freezes this landscape for long enough for the viewer to study the details and the visual history of the landscape through these simultaneously pure and complex photographs.

Born in Sedgefield, County Durham, in 1949, John Davies studied photography at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham. In the 1970s his first photographs were landscape studies of rural Britain and in 1981 he began an ongoing documentation of urban Britain, concentrating on the changing industrial and post-industrial landscape. He has published several books of photographs, The British Landscape is his latest (Chris Boot, 2006). This series has been exhibited at PhotoEspana and at the National Museum of Photography Film and Television, Bradford. His photographs have been widely exhibited, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Royal Academy of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.