Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011

Scottish amateur photographer, Robert Fulton has won the title of Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 for his stunning picture of a Winter Field in Snow.  The Cumbernauld-based photographer is the fifth person to win the overall title and the £10,000 prize.

Robert Fulton – Winter Field, Stirlingshire, Scotland

An exhibition of the winning and commended entries in the 2011 competition is to be held at the National Theatre in London.  It opens on 5th December 2011 and runs until 28th January 2012.  

A book has also been published - see Landscape Photographer of the Year Collection: 5 (Photography)

There were thousands of entries for the award - which encompasses different perspective on the landscape including urban landscapes as well as classic landscapes.  The competition also has a number of awards including one category for young photographers.

You can see a slideshow of the various photos which won awards or were highly commended on the Telegraph website

Photograph by Oscar Stewart-Packe

Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 - Awards

Below are the names of those who won awards.  The place names relate to the location of the landscape in the image.

• Landscape Photographer of the Year: Robert Fulton – Stirlingshire, Scotland.  Robert was 49 before he started taking photography seriously - although he'd always been interested in the visual arts.  He became a digital convert 11 years ago and is now a Scottish landscape photographer with an interest in Natural History.  He's very pleased to have won "the big one"!  The winning image is at the top of this post
• Young Landscape Photographer of the Year:  14 year old Oscar Stewart-Packe – London.  His winning image is on the right.

Classic View:

We are looking for an image that captures the beauty and variety of the UK landscape. An iconic view; a view along a cliff-side path or of a historic village; a view down a valley; an urban skyline or snow-capped peaks; maybe showing the drama of our seasons. Recognisable and memorable; a true classic.

• Winner Classic view:  Tim Harvey Guernsey, Channel Islands
• Runner-up Classic view:  Angus Clyne River Tay, Scotland - this was the first photography competition Angus had ever entered

Living the View

This is a category for images of people interacting with the outdoors – working or playing in the UK landscape. Possible subjects include mountain bikers, kite boarders, walkers, shepherds or even your best friend biting into a sandwich - as long as your picture shows people within their outdoor environment.

• Winner Living the view:  Baxter Bradford Hampshire, England
• Runner-up Living the view:  Mark Bradshaw Diner on A69, England

Urban View

It’s hard to pin down an exact figure, but statistics suggest that up to 80% of the UK population lives in towns or cities. That’s a huge number, so we wanted a category that highlights the surroundings that many of us live in every day. It has always been possible to enter city skylines in Classic view and concepts in Your view (and you still can), but this category really focuses on the subject - from historic to modern - but no underground car parks, tube stations etc please – anything urban and outside is eligible. 

• Winner Urban view:  Howard Kingsnorth London
• Runner-up Urban view:  Tim Morland London

Your View

What does the UK landscape mean to you? A stream rushing over pebbles, a foggy day in the Peak District, fish & chips on a deserted beach, you and your friends on your first big summit. Pretty much anything goes, as long as it is in the UK and in the outdoors. Use your imagination, as you have the scope for a very conceptual and personal approach. 

• Winner Your view:  Peter Clark Cheshire
• Runner-up our view:  Dietmar Herzog Scottish Highlands 

Youth class (16 and under)

• Winner Classic view - William Lee Lincolnshire
• Winner Living the view -  Jessica Nineham Hampshire
• Winner Urban view - Matt Woods Hampshire
• Winner Your view - William Lee Lincolnshire

The Landscape Genre within Modernist Photography

Over on Making A Mark I recently posted my Reflections on landscape painting after 1900 - which generated a fair old discussion.

One of my reflections from doing my research into the development of landscape art was as follows

I really don't understand how the painting of landscapes can be such an enduring form of art across cultures, continents and centuries - until we get to the 20th century. In the last 50+ years, landscape art just doesn't seem to be produced by the sort of contemporary artists who get into major galleries, have exhibitions in the important museums and sell for big sums in the auction houses.

I suggested a number of reasons why this might be the case - one of which was linked to our treatment of the environment and our capacity to travel and the ability to make our own pictures and videos using cameras (and now phones).

One of the nice things about this new blog is that people are writing to tell me about different aspects of landscape art - and also responding to points made.

This morning I got an email from Alan Mynett who is a retired college lecturer and keen photographer who doesn't have a blog but does have an interesting website. Do take a look at the various different types of photography he has used.

WaterLine (Venice 2009) - A handmade concertina book of pictures taken in Venice.
copyright Alan Mynett

I have lately become much more interested in drawing, painting and printmaking. As a photographer, landscape never interested me much, but I'm finding it much more amenable as a subject in these other media, so your new blog on landscape is extremely interesting to me.

It was the latest one on Kenneth Clark's Landscape into Art which triggered a memory. Clark's classification was taken up (expanded and explicitly acknowledged in their Introduction) by Estelle Jussim and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock in their book 'Landscape as Photograph' (1985), Yale University Press:

the chapter headings are

1. Landcsape as Artistic Genre
2. Landscape as God
3. Landscape as Fact
4. Landscape as Symbol
5. Landscape as Pure Form
6. Landscape as Popular Culture
7. Landscape as Concept
8. Landscape as Politics and Propaganda

Sadly, this book has long been out of print, though I was fortunate to salvage a slightly tatty copy when my college library had a clear-out just before I retired from teaching.

I mention this simply because you raised the query of why there is relatively little landscape work in the work of those artists who make up the mainstream Modernist canon.

The rise of photography, and the development of such a strong landscape genre within Modernist photography (Adams, Weston, Minor White etc etc in the States) may be significant.

Equally, though, it may have more to do with the switch of emphasis from objectivity (start with the external to cast light on the internal) to subjectivity (start from the internal and find a suitable visual expression - not necessarily originating in the external or in traditional materials and methods) in the early 20th century. In this last respect, photographers have very limited options, photography being ultimately rooted in the external.

Does anybody have anything to add? What's your view?

Link: www.mynett.me.uk