Press Release: Summer 2008 Show and Book
About 'Seasons of Mist':
Tommy Martin Melmerby Exhibition 2008
A two month exhibition at the Village Bakery in Melmerby coincides with the launch of a book of Tommy Martin's work; 'Seasons of Mist' is a photographic journey through four seasons in the North Western corner of England. Taken over three years in the Cumbrian Lake District and the Eden Valley they show a side of the region rarely seen. Avoiding the well-trodden and documented peaks and fells, Tommy Martin's images concentrate on exploring the woods, rivers and pastures of the valleys.
The exhibition at Melmerby includes limited edition prints of a selection of the images published in 'Seasons of Mist'.
Signed copies of Seasons of Mist are available from the gallery or it can be ordered from blurb.com:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/255766
The exhibition runs from July 1st to August 28th, 2008 and is open daily from 9:30am to 5pm.
The Village Bakery, Melmerby, Penrith, Cumbria, CA10 1HE
01768 881811
Tommy Martin: Biography:
Seasons of Mist Book cover
Tommy Martin started in photography working as an assistant to a number of professional photographers in London, before moving into illustration and graphic design. His return to photography and his passion for landscape and nature photography was largely fuelled by moving to Cumbria's Lake District in 2004.
In 2007 one of Martin's photographs, Stay on the Path, was selected for inclusion in the 'How We Are' exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London.
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/howweare/slideshow.shtm
His work has been published in numerous magazines, including features in PhotoArt (Czech) and Digital Photographer (UK).
His exhibition at the Village Bakery Gallery, Melmerby is the first public exhibition of his landscape photography.
He currently works as a designer and photographer and is one of the founding partners of web site development company Vertebrate.co.uk.
Tommy Martin lives in a small village in Cumbria with his fiancée.
You can find Tommy Martin's own website at:
An Artists' Statement:
I'm interested in capturing the atmosphere of the amazing places that I see around me. I want to show people just how beautiful and incredible the world around them can be. I want to show people that there is more to Cumbria than the mountains we see on every tourist brochure. We're so lucky to be living in exactly the kind of place that fairytales are set.
I've found that following the conventions of traditional landscape photography may help increase the odds of making images that tick all the aesthetic boxes but never comes close to showing how I feel about a place. My best pictures come from those times that I stop thinking about techniques and rules and just react to what I'm seeing in front of me.
I am not a documentary photographer. While my pictures are all real photographs of real places, their aim is not to act as an objective record. The point of pressing the shutter release is just the start of making the finished picture. All of my images go through various stages of post-processing, not because I want to deceive anyone, but because the camera's cold analytical view never matches how I remember a scene. It's that memory of being in a place that guides how the finished picture looks. Of course, memories are coloured by emotions, but that's rather the point.
Tommy Martin
June 2008