Outdoor Leisure Activities in Simon Roberts’s We English Photographic Project: Re-writing landscape and nation
Simon Roberts’s We English series of photographs produced in 2008 has encountered unprecedented success in Britain and abroad. Recording scenes of outdoor leisure activities in various places in England, it has become in a few years the most exhibited series in the history of British photography. It...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprache: | Anglais |
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Angles
2020
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| Online Zugang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Zusammenfassung: | Simon Roberts’s We English series of photographs produced in 2008 has encountered unprecedented success in Britain and abroad. Recording scenes of outdoor leisure activities in various places in England, it has become in a few years the most exhibited series in the history of British photography. It was also published by Chris Boot as a book of fifty-six photographs. The photos show groups of people involved in a variety of activities like hiking, paragliding, angling, hunting, bird watching, horseracing, tobogganing, “mud-racing”, picnicking, or just strolling and relaxing. As the title of the series invites the viewer to consider the Englishness of the activities represented, We English is first analysed as an update on previous representations of English customs, by looking at the rich intertext in Simon Roberts’s pictures, through centuries of English visual culture from 18th century paintings to contemporary photography. Yet this article aims to establish that there is more to Simon Roberts’s project than merely a cultural theatre where English traditions are re-enacted. It is shown that the photographer has considerably broadened the scope through key aesthetic choices. By exploring the relationship between people and public places, We English turns outdoor leisure and landscape into a social theatre. The sense of community and belonging emerges out of shared environment and space rather than from cultural practices that are reproduced and re-presented over time. This paper argues that this approach allows the photographer to reformulate the question of Englishness and national identity altogether and to offer new perspectives on rural England, with outdoor leisure activities creating a sense of openness and conviviality contrasting with previous notions of a closed, stratified, ethnocentric society. |
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