pete mcgovern

An hour in to a presentation by English landscape photographer Jem Southam and he mentions in passing a colleague at Exeter College of Art, Mike Garton, a painter. He painted in a little area of woodlands called Stoke Wood, just outside Exeter, for 26 years, 365 days of the year. He'd get up on Christmas Day, 'Here are your presents, kids', get on his bike and go and paint. A completely obsessive character. And all his paintings look the same. Bloody good painter. If he was painting and there was a twig in the way, he didn't snap it, he got a piece of string and gradually pulled it out of the way and when he finished the painting he let it back. There were all these odd bits of string all over the place, his presence is in the wood.

After 25 years of rain the sky was finally empty today and the hysteria of sun returned. Even at my advanced age sometimes it's no different to being a teenage photo-geek kid and the impulse to just go take some pictures raised its wrinkly hand of enthusiasm, just for the sake of it, no project, no discourse.  A wanting to go out. It had stopped raining. By the time I was eventually lumping a 28-105 lens + D810 into my rucksack that inviting breath of light was already diminishing. The shortest day is closing in. I set off to a strip of land, photographically awkward, always wet, always shadowy, low contrast; a murk but with tall, thin silver birches, with vivid moss coating storm-toppled trunks, and a narrow path cut through for electricity pylons, all stood in water when the river disgorges in flood. But, en route across the east of the city, I first took a detour into an industrial zone, through to a pot-holed cul de sac and a car breaker's; a yard that spills back into an e...

One day I will remember to have the camera ready and approach less noisily than a shuffling elephant when I go to photograph this windswept old tree. The hidden birds perching in its branches, observing the plain below, explode their black shapes into the air, twisting in all directions as they take flight whenever I get not even very close. Memory has failed me on three occasions this week: 1. I went to photograph this tree three days ago but had forgotten the camera. 2. I got to the till in Lidl yesterday and realised my bank card was at home in the inside pocket of my puffer jacket. 3.

It's vegan cheese. It's okay. Apart from the financial aspect.

Hats off to the generous gallery staff who, on a bitterly cold evening, had watched the official 8pm finish time sail by so as to let everyone get their turn with Ansett for a natter. The show: It's big, it's bold and, most unexpected of all, it has happened in Lincoln, (where?). Well done, Mr Ansett.  Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize Academy members, where are you? It was a treat to catch up with Jason B and Paul G from the Take One A Day & Man Up photography exhibition last year, Ben the videographer who put together some street footage with an impressive interview, and Andrea, exhibitions manager, who has breathed new life into this quiet, provincial gallery.

“From 1995 to 1998, I worked on a series of photographs of isolated houses in the desert at the east-end of the Morongo Valley in Southern California. As I meandered through the desert, a dog would occasionally chase my car. Sometime in 1996 I began to bring along a 35mm camera equipped with a motor drive and loaded with a fast and grainy black-and-white film. The process was simple; when I saw a dog coming toward the car I would pre-focus the camera and set the exposure. With one hand on the steering wheel, I would hold the camera out the window and expose anywhere from a few frames to a complete roll of film. I'll admit that I was not above turning around and taking a second pass in front of a house with an enthusiastic dog. Contemplating a dog chasing a car invites any number of metaphors and juxtapositions: culture and nature, the domestic and the wild, love and hate, joy and fear, the heroic and the idiotic. It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two ...

Coming to photographer Sally Mann's second book of writing about her photography and life, 'Art Work', immediately after finishing a collection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield, (1888-1923), I can't help but imagine they would have been firm friends should they have met, and keen admirers of each other's oeuvre even if they had not. There is striking commonality between them in regard to their choice of subject matter, both intently engrossed in the familial while effortlessly able to extend beyond the familiar .  Mansfield only made it to age 34, while Mann is 74 at the time of writing and going strong. She has had the span of life to rummage around for other, but still specifically local themes that resonate for her, moving to landscape. This may be a consequence of that first significant body of work, images of her children, which brought initial acclaim quickly followed by sharp criticism. While the fiction writer is rarely held to account for intimately...