Critique of The Last Harvest in the British Journal of Photography
I was amazed to read an article in the current issue of the BJP (here) which reviewed “The Last Harvest” along with a number of other recent projects from the online MA Photography at Falmouth University including Geoffrey Bird’s brilliant project about his wife’s dementia, my friend George Bull’s project about asylum seekers in Reading, and Catherine Hawthorne’s work about the homeless in Canada . Written by Ellie Howard, a freelance art and culture writer, the review of the project is astute and nicely sums up the project.
“For Keith Mason the MA course opened up ways to connect his practice and research with the broader social, political and ecological landscape through exploring ways documentary photography can illustrate the relationship between the farmer and the land. His project, The Last Harvest, circles around a family of tenant farmers, during their last growing season, as their small arable farm in Cambridge is sold to a property developer with plans for 2500 homes. Capturing their reality on the precipice of change, an emotional essence runs through the images, epitomised by a photograph of an empty tractor seat, or gathering about the cobwebs surrounding family photographs. The project aims to serve as a “future record of farming life in the early 21st century”, and Mason continued the conversation with the local community through an exhibition in St Neots Parish Church, Cambridge.”
Ellie Howard
Ellie Howard is a freelance arts and culture writer, based between Lisbon and London. A graduate of Manchester University and University College London, she writes about material and visual culture. Her chief interests are rooted in popular photography and the photographic boundaries between science and art. Alongside writing, she works as a picture researcher for Atelier Éditions, most recently on the forthcoming publications Beyond the Earth: An Anthology of Human Messages in Deep Space and Cosmic Time and Nudism in a Cold Climate. She has written for Magnum Photos, Photomonitor, BBC Travel, Wallpaper*, Elephant Magazine, Huck, Dazed, and Another.
Here’s screen grabs of the article
