ALEXANDER LINDSAY

South African Landscapes

19 September – 18 October

 

Entry by annual or single entry membership, more info

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Alexander Lindsay creates photographic landscapes of extraordinary beauty. For the past forty years, Lindsay has brought his cameras to the most extreme situations and environments on the planet. From his earliest experiences with the Maasai tribe, a five year spell in Afghanistan during Soviet occupation and his expeditions to photograph and film the wreck of the Titanic 4km beneath the oceans waves, Lindsay has always sought to immerse himself in situations where, as he explains, ‘the imagination is rendered unnecessary’.

This exhibition heralds a focus on the majestic terrain of Southern Africa. There are rarely animals or people in these images – just the rocks and fauna of a land that is dauntingly, almost celestially, beautiful. The series of 10 works vary in scale and all date from 2017 and 2018 when Lindsay was living in Cape Town, travelling to Lesotho and Namibia on month long sojourns. One of the most arresting images is of a young shepherd boy, standing by a waterfall, the blanket he is wearing echoing in form and colour the rocks and cliffs around him. His face turned towards the camera he stands like a sentinel, as much part of the landscape as in it.­

Lindsay is passionate about the quality of the printing of his works, which he does himself to an exactingly high standard. Using multiple images, he stitches them together to generate pictures of extraordinary definition and detail, allowing him to print on a large scale without missing even the tiniest details. Thus, a field of purple hibiscus flowering in the foreground of a picture of the Highlands of Lesotho are as detailed in definition as the mountain range behind them.

‘All my photography is in the pursuit of wonder,’ says Lindsay.  ‘People might think being a landscape photographer is tame. But to me, the absolutely real is much more interesting than anything created. I want to pay my respects to Nature through creating art from the real. My pictures are slices of time; we all live in time that never stands still and a photo gives that time significance. It is such a privilege to be alone – when one is truly alone – in landscapes like these. It’s fantastically exciting.