Robert Darch
Robert Darch came to visit us during our Spring Term, he studied photography at university and graduated with a MA from Plymouth, coming out with 2 projects.
The first project was one called Vale, outside Exeter in the valley, focusing on the still dawn of the hot summer mornings. The projects comes from the photos, not before as he went off taking photos aimlessly, just for pleasure. It took awhile for him to conceptualise his own images and come up with an idea for the work. Dealing with the sublime, he started to create a sense of place, finding elements that began to fit in. The river became essential to the work. Metaphorically the river became about how his life was flowing, from one end to another. It was about finding his feet again as a photographer.
He was taught by Jem Southam during his MA. Jem’s work was in Winter, his was in the Summer, he liked the juxtaposition of this.
Signs and luck, he doesn’t feel like a lucky person but his photos are considered lucky by him, and that you create your own luck when you photograph. A lot of the images he produced would end up being lucky, and being wonderful images.
His friend was a film maker filming in similar locations to where he was photographing, so they teamed up and went to this interesting house in the valley. It began to fit into his interests, gothic, religion, Americana, space. The house was to be sold on an auction, and there was only one person still living in there. Lots of photos were shot in the house, but only 6/7 made it into the final edit. There are a lot of layers to his work, so he said that different people will pick up different things within the work. This house reminded him of films that he loved as a child such as ‘Stand By Me’. They house that the valley was in, also had the same river that he was photographing, he walked 15 miles of the river with a group of friends, they would swim and capture lots of wonderful summery moments with his camera. He also described himself as a frustrated filmmaker, he wanted to make films but needed to be in control and also did not work too well with people.
He didn’t construct the situation, everything was natural and how it happened. No staging. He used ‘beautiful, photogenic’ people to compliment the landscape. Facial expressions bringing in anxiety and awe and getting lost in the landscape.
Macula collective - Vale is about nature and youth. The people in macula became part of the work.
Soon he moved onto another piece of work called ‘The Moor,’ based on Dartmoor. e as always had an interest, a fascination with Dartmoor. Started off with landscape photos and the idea began to develop with the work. Started to create his own narrative, own place. He wanted it to be slightly documentary.
Are they fiction or are they still from a film that we will never see? No real explanation why the people are there in his images. We inhabit the space as the viewer and everything feels perfectly natural again. This series is over the winter so comes across very bleak and plays with different light. The images try to feel otherworldly. He started off making very documentary images, quickly made the jump from this to ‘film stills’ using very interesting characters. A lto of his inspiration came from William Eggleston. The Project started off black and white and turns into colour through the project.
The Moor was fiction. No eye contact with the camera. There’s no engagement between the characters and us creating this sense of distance. The sun was worshiped here long ago by pagans. Brought in an element of this through the use of fiction.
Out of all of the guest lectures that we had this year, this one for me was the most intriguing and one that I took the most away from, possibly because I was able to relate to the work a lot more than any of the others. The idea of nature and location feeds into all of my work and I am able to take away all the different ways that Robert photographed.