Emma Chaplin, Communications Officer for Sussex Wildlife Trust, speaks to Peter Greenhalf of the Avocet Gallery and Café Tearoom in Rye Harbour, where the Trust is now building the Discovery Centre in its nature reserve, about a lifetime in pictures:
Tell us about yourself
I moved to the Rye area 43 years ago and initially lived on the reserve with the warden during art college summer holidays. I helped out with shepherding and hay-making on the farm on the reserve back then, and volunteered for conservation work – building up the islands. We would move bags of shingle in a rowing boat.
I went to Blackpool Art College in the early 70s aged 17. A full-time photographic course was rare. It was technically tough but I enjoyed it. Only five of us graduated out of a class of 70. We were employable and knew how to make a living. I got into cataloguing and advertising work and learnt about studio photography. I had a good time over my career, and worked in various places, including Japan and America.
Now I create work to sell in galleries, including my own. With digital photography, there are many fantastic landscape and wildlife photographers. Almost none of what I do is digital. I’m naturally curious and turned my skills to the craft side. I make pieces using historical photographic processes using my own darkroom. I create toned silver gelatin photographs, salt prints and cyanotypes.
One of my current projects is creating cyanotypes of flowers on the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. It involves coating watercolour paper in a light sensitive emulsion, placing flowers, such as cow parsley, on the paper, and exposing that to the sun to make a shadowgram. Then I rinse the unexposed emulsion away, leaving a white shadow of the plant on a blue background.
What interests you, photographically?
How humans have changed the landscape; how landscapes have developed. Projects to do with Neolithic sites – such as Long Barrows, stone circles and ritual sites. The timelessness, power and energy of ancient sites.
At one point in my career, I was commissioned by the Countryside Agency to work on a project on the High Weald and the South Downs AONB, which included working with a landscape archaeologist. We looked at how an area of forest had developed – for example, how it was used in the iron industry.
What has been most challenging to photograph?
Working in museums photographing artefacts could be tough. I remember a fantastically expensive, delicate original Tiffany glass lamp on Fifth Avenue, New York. I had to photograph it from above, balancing on a step ladder.
What do you want to communicate with your work?
That lots of landscapes are magical, and how fantastic the British countryside is.
Where and when would you have taken your camera, if you could go anywhere?
To the Bronze age or Neolithic era, for the construction of Avebury ritual landscape.
What equipment do you use?
I’ve got a lot of old film cameras. These include a large format wooden one, ancient Hasselblads, a pinhole camera and Fuji panoramic.
What’s your photography technique?
I’m not a snap photographer. I sit down and look. I mull, and spend a lot of time just looking. I can visit a site and realise that the light, the time of day, or even the time of year isn’t right and plan to come back to the same place to get the right shot.
What do you find most challenging to photograph?
Landscapes in different weather conditions, because of the unpredictability of the landscape. The light can change so much.
Has anything unexpected happened?
A lot of what I do is experimental, so I have a tremendous failure rate! So much is uncontrollable. So lots of unexpected things happen.
When did you become interested in wildlife?
My parents and siblings were all outdoor, country people. My brother Robert was always keen on birds and is a bird artist. We grew up in Lindfield and we spent a lot of our childhood outdoors. I’m not so much a bird watcher, but am interested in bees, and do surveying here and Dungeness.
You and Morgan are both great supporters of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, and the Discovery Centre
I’ve always supported the reserve, and was on the Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve committee in the 1980s. Morgan is also now on the committee, wrote The Shingle Shore as a fundraiser for the reserve and currently edits the Friends newsletter.
We have both supported the Discovery Centre since the project started and look forward to using the new building next year- always have.
Tell us about the Avocet Gallery
Morgan and I started the Avocet Gallery and Cafe Tearoom nine years ago and we’ve worked hard. We’re pleased that we’ve got a reputation for an interesting selection of great art as well as delicious, locally-sourced food.
Emma Chaplin’s interview ends with a pointer to more of Peter’s photography here and a film about Peter’s work. She goes on to talk more about the The Discovery Centre which is a joint project between Sussex Wildlife Trust and the Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve.
“It will transform people’s engagement in, and conservation of, the special natural environment and wider heritage of the nature reserve and will be a fantastic resource for thousands of visitors.
“Anyone interested in learning more about the Discovery Centre can request a monthly newsletter to keep them posted about build news, sightings of some of the outstanding wildlife at the reserve, and ways to donate to the Appeal here
“The Friends of Rye Harbour Nature Reserve is a charity whose 2,000 members support the Nature Reserve’s work through subscriptions and volunteering. Since 1973, it has part-funded the cost of staff, land purchase, large scale habitat creation, tools, vehicles and visitor facilities such as bird-watching hides and information centres. It provides events for its members throughout the year.”
For further information contact Emma Chaplin, Communications Officer for Sussex Wildlife trust: Direct line: 01273 497 510 email emmachaplin@sussexwt.org.uk
Source: Sussex Wildlife Trust
Image Credits: Peter Greenhalf .