Three Peaks
Three Peaks is an exhibition of Poetry and Photography by
Sarah Lee and Lee Johnson. The three peaks in question are all in Pendle and
are; Pendle Hill, Boulsworth and Weets.
Sarah and Lee work together and have known each other for 7
years. They are both passionate about
the landscape and one day starting talking about putting images and words
together.
The inspiration behind three peaks was to explore places
less often seen. Pendle Hill as an image is quite iconic and seen a lot, but
the places around it less so. In effect it’s an exhibition around hidden
Pendle.
Sarah and Lee set off on a series of walks together with the
aim of capturing moments. These moments are then expresses in a photograph with
an accompanying Haiku. The moments aren’t always simultaneous, sometimes the
Haiku expresses the moment before the photograph was taken or the moment after.
Sarah and Lee both have busy lives too, so sometimes Lee
would go out alone and take photographs. He would make lots of notes and send
these to Sarah and then on some of the images the poem was created simply by
looking at the image rather than being there.
Lee tends to work with what is happening around him, he
doesn’t necessarily have a plan, but likes to capture the feel of the place as
he is there, particularly to show the weather. Some of the images represent
beautifully sunny days and others are misty and more brooding. He starts with
the big landscape image and then goes down into smaller more detailed views,
which are often a landscape in themselves, albeit in miniature.
Sarah takes notes while she is out, but then writes the
Haiku later. A Haiku is a short poem designed to capture the moment, a sense of
the present. They are often 17 syllables long, but there are no hard and fast
rules. Haiku has been around for quite a while, since the poet Basho took a
journey and wrote poems on the journey, entitled Narrow Road to Deep North, it
was published in the Sixteenth Century. You can read more here
The aim behind the Haiku is to capture the atmosphere. When writing the Haiku, Sarah will look at
her notes, at images, and she is particularly inspired by maps and place names.
She says “They are often really atmospheric in themselves”. Some are quite
spooky, some witchy. For example:
Above Burnt House
And Wicken Clough
You watch in fading
light
Lee thinks both him and Sarah have a dark side!
The project was a new challenge for Lee. He didn’t know
Weets at all, although he spends a lot of time on Boulsworth. He also tends to
shoot in black and white and these photographs are in colour, and he had to
learn more about Haiku to make the project work.
The images were all taken fairly recently with the majority
being from November 2013. This brought challenges too; weather and light. But
you can’t organise nature. One plan had
been to capture the horses at Castercliff but when our intrepid duo arrived,
the horses had been moved.
Another image:
Slaughterstones on the top of Boulsworth, we discussed in more detail.
It was a cold and misty November morning, and our
photographer (him with rucksack, 2 cameras and spare lenses) and poet (her with
pen and paper) spent two hours walking on Boulsworth. At one point they
experienced a standoff with some cows who had been causing trouble with many
walkers. As a result the image feels a little like the landscape is pressing
in, and the Haiku also has a sense of threat.
So as always, I hope you get the chance to come and see this
exhibition in person. The names of the places are all on the labels, so you can
go and visit them for yourselves if you want to.
We’ll end with a quote from Sarah, who says “Why not have a
at doing this yourself? Take a photograph and write a poem about the moment.
It’s fun!”
Thanks,
Kirsty
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