Both my Tutor and Yan Preston mentioned Mellor’s work, and have both covered it in their PhDs, which gives an opportunity for comparison.
Preston accepts Mellor’s mapping method as an alternate way of looking at the British coastline, while commenting on the fact that “true objectivity is difficult to achieve” (Preston, 2018:92) (for example choice of weather, although this could be negated by a pre-formed plan, but the point is made). Preston concludes that these are “accidental landscapes” (Preston, 2018:92) or ” alternate views” (Preston, 2018:92) of the typical idea of the British coastline.
These conclusions are important for Preston in that, relating it back to her own work, she finds that the notion of the Yangtze River is a myth, constructed within the Chinese culture.
In fact the point can also be made that true objectivity is almost impossible to achieve. Wyatt takes this much further by using modern techniques unavailable to Mellor at the time (i.e. Google) to show that at least one point was considerably different from that published, which was inland. Mellor responded that this was a publishing error, and apart from this errant point it is important that Mellor did not state a precise methodology for deciding the frame for each image – if she had (and this turned out to be true) this would undermined the important bond of trust between photographer and viewer.
To create her frame, Mellor used a Widelux camera, widely used for surveying, to create her panoramic images. I note that I have also suggested a panoramic frame for Rye Harbour due to the flatness of the landscape at the coast – my point being that the panoramic approach can be seen as an aesthetic choice as well, particularly since Mellor also chose to place the horizon in the middle of the frame (which could unbalance non-panoramic images). This discipline is softened, however, by having structures such as rocks rise above the mid-line, which works well to avoid what would otherwise be an over-repetitive approach when viewed in series.
It seems obvious to me that the frame is filled aesthetically, going considerably beyond any objectivity. However (so long as the artist was not trying to claim otherwise) I have no issue with this, in fact I have blogged before about the importance of the aesthetic in drawing the viewer to the work, at which stage further points can be made.
Wyatt, via Wells, goes on to question the idea of the work as a survey – “cartography is not neutral” (Wells, 2011:273 quoted in Wyatt, 2019:145). This I think is extremely important (and true!) since it brings nuance to Wyatt’s initially technical point and hence to his conclusion that “her seemingly straightforward survey style allowed her to draw attention to the complicated relationship the British have with their island’s boundary” (Wyatt, 2019:145).
I struggled a bit with Mellor’s website to get the monograph of this work – it transfers you to another website which would not accept credit cards – note to self if ever attempting something commercial, make it easy for the consumer to buy the product! Actually when it arrived the book was very interesting. The map is a useful structural device but also provides a more interesting index than a List of Photographs. This is a way of looking at our isalnd by looking away from it, somehow. It feels like a very British kind of survey, as the introductory passage from Paul Theroux suggests. Some of the photographs (the ones not on the website) were a bit tedious but that is kind of the point – proceeding through the book feels like a journey, which has its ups and downs, and the sense of returning to the starting point was enhanced by bookending the series with the same image. I was quite sad when the trip ended!
The book also comes with a mini signed print, which was a nice touch, although I felt it was let down a bit by the quality of the printing – surprising from Dewi Lewis. Maybe the low price of the book put a constraint on the budget, but the colour it many of the images seems particularly cold.
I would have enjoyed seeing the images printed large in an exhibition, to be able to read the signs within them and feel a bit more like you were there, perhaps even imagine the smell of the sea …
The theme in all cases mutes from scientific or quasi-scientific to a much more psychogeographical examination. Furthermore it occurs to me that what may be important here is expectations – those of the photographer, the culture in which he/she is operating and in which the landscape exists, and those of the viewer. Preston found the Yangtze far more polluted and industrialised than she expected. Both Mulder (in his 1974 photographic survey of the Netherlands – reviewed here: https://contextandnarrative515050.wordpress.com/2016/11/01/unseen-2016/) and myself (in my photographic walk along the Thames Path, here: https://land515050.home.blog/2019/09/30/2-text/) found the situation to be far more rural than we expected.
Expectations of landscape is perhaps an interesting field for further work – this is related to cultural interpretation but perhaps goes further, involving the subjective processing of what the viewer knows about the site before they encounter it? Do we notice – photograph as notable – that which is different from our expectations, for example? This is different from the accepted approach that we tend to copy the viewpoint?
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- Mellor, K.(1989) Bat’s Head. At: https://www.katemellor.com/island-the-sea-front (Accessed 15.8.2022)
- Mellor, K.(1989) from Island: The Sea Front. At: https://www.katemellor.com/island-the-sea-front (Accessed 15.8.2022)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Mellor, K. (1997) Island: The Sea Front. England: Dewi Lewis Publishing
- Mulder, R. (1974) Objective Netherlands. At: https://objectiefnederland.nl/?lang=en (Accessed 12.8.2022)
- Preston, Y. (2018) YANGTZE THE MOTHER RIVER – Photography, Myth and Deep Mapping
- Wyatt, D. (2019) Landscape of Legislation: A Photographic Investigation of the Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Level 3.1 Learning Log 
3 thoughts on “Kate Mellor”