Woman and horse

A battle of wills caught between a woman and a horse. With unruly behaviour and pricked ears, the lens renders him more mule than thoroughbred. The composition allows the eye to be led into the image by the pathway but tension and drama are provided by the tussle, the tightened rein cutting through the image, the lowering sky, and the woman’s expression. The interest in this shot comes from the story of the relationship between the woman and her horse, and the character the lens gives to them both.

Words by Vilja Wheatcroft

Awarded an Honourable Mention in International Photography Awards competition, Oneshot: Movement

Apocalyptic in nature with a lowering sky and a landscape full of threat, this image features sheep feasting on abandoned cabbages.  There’s plenty to intrigue the observer, mainly through the composition and shadow-play generating ambiguity an… — Apocalyptic in nature with a lowering sky and a landscape full of threat, this image features sheep feasting on abandoned cabbages. There’s plenty to intrigue the observer, mainly through the composition and shadow-play generating ambiguity and complexity There’s mystery too – the incongruous obelisk structure in the dead-centre of the frame, the abstract interplay between leaves and sky on the bush in the foreground, and the cabbage remains with echoes of grainy genocidal war images. All good photographs involve paradox at some level, and here it’s the incongruity of the grazing sheep placed in an environment that is both familiar and absurd.
**Words by Vilja Wheatcroft**

Architectural Aesthetics 13/3/2021Architecture is often an intrinsic element in street photography.  The buildings at once enfold, dominate, exclude or promote the figures in the picture.  Tone, shape, shade, and light cast them as actors,… — **Architectural Aesthetics**
**13/3/2021**
Architecture is often an intrinsic element in street photography. The buildings at once enfold, dominate, exclude or promote the figures in the picture. Tone, shape, shade, and light cast them as actors, offering environments of threat, safety, warmth, or isolation.
The soaring rectangles of this image provide both harmony and juxtaposition The figures in the picture seem in step not just with each other but with the careful symmetry of their environment. They appear to belong within it and are apparently at ease in their space. Yet they are also engulfed by the size of the building, which fills the frame, and the sheer weight of their surroundings threaten to annihilate them. The architecture here seems incarcerating with its limits set well outside the frame. It is their movement through the image as a snapshot that renders the picture so ‘watchable’. Not only do they provide movement to an otherwise immutable and sterile space, but they also give the image an additional ‘life’. The ‘watcher’ can fill in what came before and what is to come in the photograph, and there is enough here in our imaginings outside the frame, to prompt questions and generate intrigue.
**Words by Vilja Wheatcroft**

Space - Isolation and ownership

Peter Corbett April 9, 2020

The people in this series inhabit a space that they are both familiar with and at odds with. With a few exceptions, they are alone and isolated within their space. Often their activities are juxtaposed by the environment they inhabit - a ragged man sleeping on the millionaire's bench or another on a grassy urban bed. A child, eerie and doll-like staring blankly out at the city, a bemused figure in a teeming station, and an elderly woman in an urban park, bleakly contemplating spring blossom. On the city street, a fruit seller yawns, echoing the form of his fruit while an Indian vendor is elevated by his space literally and is rendered pleasingly superior to the lens.

The series encourages us to engage with and understand both isolation and ownership of space, and in doing so, understand and seek meaning in the places we inhabit.

Words: Vilja Wheatcroft