James Ravilious on BBC4 tonight.

james Ravilious, photographer son of painter Eric, has been mentioned before on this site for his

poignant, intimate photos of rural life in Devon. Playwright and author Alan Bennett has written the

introduction to a new Ravilious book - bennett interview <a href="http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/

photography/story/0,,2211566,00.html">here.</a>. A World In Pictures, a documentary on Ravilious, is

on

BBC4 tonight. <p>

Ravilious's site is <a href="http://www.jamesravilious.com/">here.</a>

ooh cheers for that Paul

I'll second that! Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks Paul, am watching it right now!

Interesting programme. My parents now live in North Devon so I'm familiar with the landscape as it is now - it's astonishing to see how much it has changed since when Ravilious was working there.

It was interesting to see how he adapted his Leica to produce the low contrast, silvery watercolour effect through using old lenses with customised lens hoods so he could shoot into the light without flare.

I also valued the comment about how black and white removes the problem of the very greenness of the Devon countryside.

I agree with David. It was an interesting and rather poignant programme. Following on

from 'the Genius of Photography', which I think is a really terrific series, it made Thursday

night essential viewing for photographers.

 

One minor quibble, given that the programme was about an English photographer working

in a disappearing English landscape, I can't help but think the programme makers missed

a trick by using Arvo Part (great though he is) for the background music. Maybe someone

like Vaughn Williams or Purcell would have been more appropriate or perhaps that would

have been too obvious?

 

Last night's 'the Genius of Photography' was on street photography (Eggleston, Frank, Parr,

Winogrand et al). It will be repeated, on Monday night, and I think it's worth seeking out.

Interesting observation re Arvo Part, Andrew... I thought it worked well, Vaughan Williams or

Pucell might well have sounded too romanticised. And although Alan Bennett is very

obviously a Yorkshireman, his homeliness suited the mood.<p> I loved the severity of the

landscape, as well as Ravilious's humanity... I wondered, too, how the hell he and his wife

made a living

on an arts grant, and admired him for doing so. I didn't think the TV did justice to the

quality of his prints, though, many of them looked soft. Could be my eyesight, of course.

Paul,

 

I've often wondered about just how sharp a lot of his prints were. I must confess, I haven't

seen them in the flesh, as it were. Mind you, I would suppose that, even if he wanted to

move up to medium format, or whatever, the diminutive size of his grant would have

probably prohibited it.

 

I thought it was interesting to note the contrast betweeen Ravilious and his working

methods have just seen Meyerowitz in action on the streets of New york in 'the Genius of

Photography'. The quietness of Ravilious's photographs seemed even greater.

 

I agree with you that VW or Purcell could have sounded too lush, too romantic but I still

have reservations about Part, in this particular instance.

 

By the way, you might be concerned about your eyesight but could you understand what

was being said by the locals? The Beeb should have supplied sub-titles.

Some of the dialects were utterly incomprehensible ...

 

I wanted to hear a little more about the project he was working on, but the details were a bit sketchy. In other respects too I felt the programme (like some others in the series) was just a touch superficial - a bit too much 'art-crit & waffle' and not enough of the excellent photography for me (it's a personal preference). However, the wide affection expressed for Ravilious (even with the unintelligible cameo performances) illustrated how he integrated into an 'off-the-beaten-track' comunity in a way that may be rather difficult today. I guess the sub-text is "buy the book". AC

Just a small note for those mentioning him in the present tense (from a long time fan of James Ravilious), he died in 1999.

I'm the current Director of Beaford Arts, and so can provide at least a partial answer to Alan's comment above. James's brief was to record the land and people of north Devon. It was as open-ended as that. He was a part-time employee of Beaford Arts and his role was to create that record.

 

He was originally hired (in the early 1970s) by Beaford's founding director, John Lane. Lane "didn't want pale documentation at all; or an avant-garde approach out of step with the culture of the area. I was looking for ... someone capable of showing North Devon people to themselves."

 

It was left to James to work out what this brief meant, but it's fair to say that he found his vocation within it. Lane originally asked him to take "a few photos"; after seventeen years James had amassed 80,000 images for the Beaford Archive. James' employment with Beaford Arts came to an end at a time when funding was a major issue for many UK arts organisations.

 

(He also collected older images from the people he knew and photographed; there are over 5,000 images in the "Old Archive" from the same area, most taken between 1880-1920. Locally, this is a uniquely valuable resource for social historians.)

 

Anson Hartford, the director of the film shown on BBC4 yesterday, is independent of Beaford Arts and so I'm fairly sure he didn't have a "buy the book" sub-text. That said, we are reprinting the retrospective study "An English Eye" first published alongside James Royal Photographic Society exhibition of the same name in 1998. A subset of that exhibition will be at the Coningsby Gallery in London for a week at the beginning of January (6th-12th, I think, but do check - dates being finalised).

 

Hope that helps a little. BTW, personal view - I think VW would have been overkill. That said, listening to "Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus" in late summer sunshine in the heart of Ravilious country is something everyone should do at least once ...

Mark,

 

Thanks for your clarifying comments. I look forward to the exhibition in London, sometime

next year.

Likewise, good to hear from you, Mark, do please post here and alert us if the projected

dates change.

Thanks Mark, for the broader context. My "sub-text" comment wasn't particularly well-phrased; nevertheless, buying the book is certainly warranted from what we saw of James Ravilious' work on screen. It'll be on my Christmas list .... AC

Almost halfway tempted to buy a televizhun. But some books, certainly. They will make wonderful Christmas presents.

I have almost all of Ravilious' books "An English Eye" and "Down the deep lanes", "A corner of England" and even the book "Traditional foods of Britain" that James photographed for....

 

http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/pages/isbn874.htm

 

If you like his work then you really should check out Chris Chapman who also documents the Devon area in B&W and has done since the early 1970s. The two men were friends...

 

http://www.chrischapmanphotography.com/

 

Please especially look at the photo essay "Last Days at Truelove Farm"

 

I look forward to the Ravilious exhibition an d the reprint of English Eye. No harm in having two copies.

Thanks for all that info, Trevor. Greatly appreciated.