Rick Davies' Black Country Stories

Artist’s statement

I am a landscape photographer, more precisely, I photograph the human-altered landscape. I do this because I believe that it is possible to identify the underlying factors that drive our society through a study of the physical environment that we have created. As economic crises become more frequent and severe, it becomes even more urgent to create visual documents, which can bear critical analysis. I believe that the unusual breadth and detail of the panoramic image lends itself well to such interrogation.

A careful examinationof the  landscape can reveal the powerful forces that bind the individual to their culture; these forces range from the simple physical influences of nature and topography to the effects of economic and political decision-making. Our vision is always political and directly effects the way we see and also what we allow ourselves to see. It is my hope that a careful interrogation of these images may allow the viewer to reject the every-day, commonsense view of their environment and see their surroundings as produced by a particular economic system, a system that can be resisted and changed.  Rick Davies

Biography

Rick Davies’ interest in the lens-based media was catalyzed by attendance at adult education courses run by Ffotogallery in Cardiff. He went on to complete a BA(hons) course in Documentary Photography in 2010 at the University of Wales, Newport. The artist is concerned with the depiction of the contemporary landscape, using photography to illustrate how geographical, historical, political and economic factors produce the individual and her society.

CV

Ba(hons), Documentary Photography, University of Wales, Newport, 2010.

Exhibitions

Invisible Landscapes’, part of the ‘Wish you were here’ Ffotogallery season, Cardiff in September 2011.

Black Country Stories at The Public, West Bromwich in January 2012.

Recent reviews of the artist’s work

By Skye Sherwin in the Guardian guide Saturday, 6 August 2011.

"It's hard to believe that what Rick Davies shows us isn't the result of some fantastical cutting and pasting. In his Gursky-like panoramic photos of Wales' changing landscape, hi-tech plants stretch seemingly as far as the eye can see like a city of the future, though rows of cars parked up next to ploughed fields shows this is present-day. The spires of ancient rural churches are echoed by factory edifices, while train tracks, metal pipes and monster mining operations seem to overshadow the mountains in the distance. Tellingly, though, both industry and countryside seem equally lonely and abandoned."