Mark Adams
Mark Adams is a photographer whose practice and research is concerned with landscape representation. His work explores the cultural forces that impact upon landscapes as well as the personal narratives that are woven into everyday places through walking.
Over the past 20 years Mark has exhibited in galleries and museums the United States, Europe and the UK. His work appears in Paris Lit Up magazine, Next Level, Der Greif magazine and recently in the American Landscape publication 'Observations in the Ordinary'. He is member of Millennium Photographers Agency and Senior Lecturer in photography at York St John University. He currently lives in North Tyneside.
OUTLOOK [VIEWS FROM THE NORTH EAST]
2015-2021
During a recent assessment of the vulnerability of European countries, the UK is high on the list of nations who could be impacted dramatically by rising sea levels caused by climate change. ‘Outlook’ reflects on part of this affected landscape - the coastal region of the North East of England. In photographs made between 2015-2021, a transitional period is mapped, a time Britain is contemplating its identity as an island nation, its independence and the looming issue of climate change.
This ongoing project is motivated by the intersecting subjects of coastal architecture, topography and the changing climate. The process of walking provides the impulse for making images and traversing coastal paths, sparsely populated seafronts, exploring borders, boundaries and domestic architecture on the edge of land.
In my practice, walking is an instrument of contemplation, establishing conditions through the rhythms that mediate between departure and arrival. As Rebecca Solnit once remarked 'The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts’ (2000 pp.5-6)
Port of Blyth II, Blyth, Northumberland
Coastal Defence I, South Beach, Blyth, Northumberland
Traffic Island, Seaton Sluice, Northumberland
Suburban House, Blyth, Northumberland
Tourist Telescope, Cullercoats, North Shields
Beachfront, Whitley Bay, North Tyneside
The project avoids classic tropes of documentary photography that deal with the immediate and visible, instead the images indirectly explore perceived threats - sea levels, tides, embankments, sea defenses – potential consequences or responses to climate change that lie beyond the horizon. The inward gaze towards architecture and the natural topography of the land is presented here in relation to the horizon, providing a space for contemplating what one might call home and security.
‘Moving is not strange to me, both physically and emotionally I am most comfortable in motion. For me, being in motion itself provides a sense of stability – having left but not yet being there.’
• Rendell. J, (2002) Travelling the distance/Encountering the Other, Blamey D (ed.), Here, There, Elsewhere, London. Open Editions
• Solnit, R. (2000). Wanderlust: a history of walking. London. Penguin.
Embankment I, Blyth, Northumberland
Coastal Defence III, New Biggin by the sea, Northumberland
Coastal Defence III, New Biggin by the sea, Northumberland
Jetty, Blyth, Northumberland
