Jem Southam

Jem Southam is a British landscape photographer, best known for his documentation of locations. He spends photographing the various changes in an individual environment, returning to the location over a period time. He's able to capture the subtle changes that happen over a period of time. 

My original shoot for the New Topographics inspired work featured quite a few nature-y images, making them look closer to Southam's work. I chose to redo that shoot, and edit these to fit with Southam's, and I'm really glad I did. This does mean that I was only replicating his "aesthetic" - these images don't document any environmental changes.

I'm really pleased with how the edits turned out, as I think they do replicate Southam's style pretty accurately. If I were to further develop this shoot, I'd definitely revisit the locations a few times in an attempt to document the changes as he does. 

This situation definitely taught me something important - you shouldn't discard work you're not 100% happy with. I wasn't pleased with the original shoot, but because I still had copies of the photos, and was therefore able to repurpose them, resulting in me creating something I'm proud of.