Where is the Love?

 

I like this picture, but what do you think?

It breaks one of my golden rules – it has people in it – plus the heart isn’t easy to see, though once you’ve seen it it’s clear enough. I like it because it builds a bigger landscape and it makes a nice change from the usual heart + location shot that I generally run with for this project. I’ve always liked the kind of hard-cut panoramas you get when you just piece them together roughly, and this has that effect.

It’s from Portland, Church Ope Cove to be precise, same as the last picture. You’ll find a map link in that post. Where smugglers once came ashore with brandy and tobacco there is now this scattering of eccentric beach huts and, on a summer’s day like this was, the sight of burning English bodies scorching themselves in the sun.

Putting this together I was reminded that I once photographed some hearts on a fence and went away and came up with another idea but found that the fence had been painted black by the time I returned. I’d wanted to re-photograph the hearts (there were at least a dozen) and then blow them up to life-size before piecing them back together on the wall. It was thinking about Hockney’s photographic collages that prompted the idea. Next time I see a whole bunch of hearts in one place I must remember what I was too late to do then… but the join on this picture makes me think of just a piece of a bigger image.

 

love | landscape