CAROLYN DEW
Photographic Artist
Wild & Tamed
When entering a remarkable garden or natural landscape you experience a state of sensory contentment, for humans adopt an intuitive attention mode of fascination when they are in safe, natural environments. In nature, sounds, sights and smells spontaneously take us into a reverie, daydream, and contemplation and these states of mind have restorative qualities.
Early photography was concerned with fixing the 'fleeting shadow' of nature. The desire to record the passing scenes that capture our eye as we wander in the natural world is a shared intent for creating these photographs. As the natural world shrinks to national parks, pot plants, and signifiers, there is an urgency to look lovingly and protectively upon it. Enchantment will vanish from the world if nature, wild or tame, is reduced to existing only as an artefact, a myth or a phantom.
Photographs by Carolyn Dew & Rhys Jones
Softcover, 54 pages, self published November 2018
On the 25th of February 2019 my dear buddy in all things photography and everyday life, Rhys Jones, passed away suddenly while out bush walking. He loved to be amongst the trees and behind his camera.
Meadow of Lost Trees
Carolyn Dew (Rhys Jones), 2020, Hand-coloured Silver Gelatin Print
One of the last negatives Rhys produced, a work in progress left on the light table, that he never could return to and that I have finished.