Nicholas Hughes, The Sound of Space Breathing [Verse III, no. 13], 2021

Rendered in silvery greys and deep blacks, Nicholas Hughes' photographs are luminous in quality and reveal the rich tonal range of natural light. Each work is an invitation to consider the potential of landscape, whether that be the shimmer of condensation on a branch, the close knit canopies of foliage, or the shift in natural forms on reaching the coast where he captures both the force and stillness of the sea.

He pushes the limits of his practice by exploiting the photomechanical in the darkroom, often layering imagery to create new, magical scenes that evoke the emotional reality of his environment. For Hughes, the art of looking is akin to the art of listening and his series’ often follow musical or poetic lines. The Sound of Space Breathing is structured in verses inspired by the lyricism of the natural world and the rhythm of his own physical movement through the landscape.

Deeply influenced by cultural histories of walking and writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Rebecca Solnit, Hughes observes that “Revelations come over time – slow time. It is often in the detail that the greatest insights take place. The wood grain is as the rippled puddle, the spacing of stars in the night sky akin to the flower heads breaking the surface of the pond. Through nature, all makes sense, all things flow one into the other.”

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Nicholas Hughes U.K., 1963