Sam Smith

Edgeland Nottingham

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I was recently looking through all the photos I took during my 4 years living in Nottingham to see if I could come up with some kind of series out of them. After cutting it down to all the black & white images that turned out reasonably I had just over 200 photos so I needed to come up with some more specific ideas. One theme I tend to shoot a lot is where nature meets the built environment, which lead me to put together this series. I got the title, and some inspiration, from Robin Friend’s Bastard Countryside (watch this video for a good introduction).

Black & white photo looking through a hedgerow across the roofs of some brick houses with farmland heading into the horizon

Black & white photo of a brick house behind a small grassy area with a few small bare trees
Black and white photo of the base of a tree, the trunk of which is wrapped in a wire mesh
Black and white photo of the base of a tree surrouned by a square of old wood and metal fencing in a large and mostly empty field
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Black and white photo of a line of sticks stuck in a pond, linked with two pieces of wire to create a fence which creates an "S" shape
Black and white photo of a stream emerging from a concrete pipe, surrounded by a forest of bare trees
Black & white photo of a pond surrounded by reeds with a line of trees in the background and various pieces of litter in the foreground
Black & white photo of a ford through a stream surrounded by a lot of vegetation including bare trees
Black & white photo of a power plant with 8 cooling towers and one tall chimney behind a tree line, which is on the edge of a wide river which curves from the bottom centre of the image to the left
Black & white photo of a path atom a berm with a staircase heading down surrounded by metal fencing in the foreground, and trees and electricity transmission wires and a pylon in the background
Black & white photo looking down at a narrow road in between dense vegetation and the base of a large electricity pylon in the top right corner of the image
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Black & white photo of a corner of a small bricked wall below a bridge with patches of white paint where graffiti has been painted over and one piece of uncovered graffiti
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This series was shot with my Hasselblad 500C/M, CF 60mm and 150mm lenses, and Ilford HP5+ at EI 800 and developed in HC-110 1+49 for 11 minutes, except for image 13, which was shot on Ilford FP4+ at EI 400 and developed in HC-110 1+49 for 16 minutes.

In Feburary 2019 I started shooting a series with a similar theme in a small nature reserve in Nottingham on Fuji Pro 400H, but I’ve never been able to get acceptable scans from the 2 rolls I shot. If I do manage to get something useful from them I might put together a part 2 to this project.