The Fens is an area of reclaimed marshland in the East of England occupying nearly 3,900km² artificially drained over centuries to provide some of Britain’s most fertile agricultural land. It is a landscape of agribusiness defined by man’s control of nature with monoculture at its core. Through photographs largely devoid of people, Hart explores our relationship with the landscape in both a humanistic and socio-historical sense. His narrative examines the complex interrelation that exists between humanity and nature & aims to raise important questions about human-altered topography and our occupation and stewardship of this land. By focusing on the often-overlooked elements in familiar vistas, the aesthetics carry a documentary sensibility that allows the landscapes to define themselves. Hart works solely with the analogue process and employs traditional darkroom practice to convey something of the soulful in a landscape which is rarely considered of aesthetic merit.

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About
British photographer Paul Hart (b. 1961) graduated from Nottingham Trent University (UK) in 1988 with a BA (Hons) in Photography. He has exhibited widely, most recently at; The Austrian Cultural Forum (London), The Photographers’ Gallery (London) and The Cultural Foundation ARCADE (Dijon), alongside international art fairs Photo London, Paris Photo and the AIPAD Show (USA). Hart received the inaugural Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize (Vienna) in 2018/19 and was shortlisted for the HARIBAN Award (Tokyo) 2019. His photographs reside in collections including the V&A Museum (London), Ivor Braka Collection (London), MoMA Library Collection (NYC) and the Martin Parr Foundation Library (Bristol, UK). The photo book is central to Hart’s practice, having published four books with Dewi Lewis. In 2020 he concluded the Fenland Trilogy: a long-term project made over a ten year period published as three separate monographs; RECLAIMED (2020), DRAINED (2018) and FARMED (2016).