Anyone who has visited the Usher Gallery will likely have seen this panel of leaves. I seem to think it's been on display for most of the last 35 years, on the first floor, turn right at the top of the marble stairs, in the small-ish contemporary art room. It's a rare thing in that it's photographic in nature, as well as of nature, and like most art galleries there's never a lot of space for photography.
As well as clarity of idea the whole endeavour of the making was done with a high level of care. Overall it's pleasing, accessible. That aside it was not a type of picture making or subject in any way similar to whatever I was doing or how I was doing it, at the time, or at any time. (But not as if I was actually doing anything for a fair bit of that time, although the last twenty years have shown a more concerted effort).
Over the last month I've been reviewing hard drives of images from 2019 to the present and folders of hedge photos crop up every autumn. A subject that first came about for me in 2014, when I inadvertently joined an anti-drone march to the local RAF base, and was on-going with only a year or two missed, and ending in late 2024 when the landowner eventually put up trespass warning signs that felt almost personal after all that time.
I had made several trips in late October, early November 2022, collecting leaves showing the burnt colours and decay of the season which were photographed on an improvised light box. I would have been very conscious this was deep into Fabian-Miller territory and I probably should be wary of an aesthetic Keep Out sign. Reviewing them now I can't help but consider assembling an acknowledging piece. And while made superficially alike, in a grid, of 144 leaves gathered within the county, the underlying contemplation would be rather different.
72 leaves from a Beech tree growing in the grounds of the Usher Gallery and 72 leaves from 36 Beech trees across rural sites in Lincolnshire.