Dan Sumption : Personal Projects : Pastoralia

Coppice
Fern
Tennis
Descent
Verge
Two Paths

I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand - Leonardo da Vinci

Pastoralia takes its title from a dark satirical story by George Saunders. The term Pastoral (defined as "a rural life, usually associated with people raising animals") has often been used in art and music, but my photographs do not depict this countryside idyll of farmers and flocks. Instead they feature urban green spaces: parks, allotments and wasteland. The animal alluded to is, in this case, my black dog Gizmo, who always accompanies me and occasionally intrudes into these pictures.

The overall aesthetic of the series is derived from the memory of a terrifying discovery I made inside a dark hawthorn copse when I was ten years old. More recently, I have often found relics from the previous night's muggings in locations where these photos are shot.

These mixed feelings feed into the pictures' strong contrasts between light and dark, town and country, tranquillity and terror, familiarity and mystery.

Status: replaced by a more coherent, and still ongoing, project exploring the same themes, Ponderosa.

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