Nowhere Far, the first monograph by Nicholas Hughes has been 15 years in the making and spans six separate series of abstract and ethereal landscapes.
Hughes’s work is concerned with our environment and contemporary man’s relationship to it, examining the space between the world people habit and that which nature claims as its own.
These themes were formed through observing the changing patterns of nature over a two to three-year period in a series of locations, created in some way, by being still. Over time, the photographer's practice has evolved so he only makes work within walking distance of his homes – ‘In Darkness Visible’ was produced in London's public parks and ‘Field’ in Cornwall.
Each work, despite the self-imposed geographical restriction, is meant to represent nature worldwide and not the specific location of its creation. The work is an introspective antidote to our current era of high-speed image production and circulation, both in its method of production and the resulting photograph, and has been termed as 'slow photography'.
Every image is captured using a large-format camera and the film is printed by hand in a colour darkroom. The final photographs are meditative; encouraging the viewer to slow down and reflect.
