John Davies, the famous English landscape photographer, took his camera to the North of France, just outside Béthunes. This region of France is famous for its mining culture. John was interested in how this area has changed over the years and found the variations of the geography particularly fascinating. In typical John Davies style he captures the history of past industry in epic scenes and subtle tones.

This look at the world of the mine is not new to the photographer. Indeed, in the 1980s, John Davies photographed, especially in Wales, the British mining landscape. A series that had helped to recognise his talent. Thus the construction of this book revisits the history of the photographer, confronting nearly thirty years between the work done in Britain and one performed recently in France. This book also confronts two regions of two countries in which the operation of the mine and the lives around it have fundamentally changed. The book offers up these comparisons to the reader in a bold and beautiful way.

Edition Loco

The best of John Davies’ landscape photographs of Britain, made between 1979 and 2005, are presented in the order in which they were taken and on a spectacular scale. The series begins with Davies’ dramatic photographs of the Scottish mountains and the Lake District, before moving on to examine urban and semi-urban Britain. Most of the pictures are made from a position of elevation, many of the edges of towns, revealing layers of social history from the Industrial Revolution onwards, and allowing viewers to read the landscape in the manner of a history picture. Stunningly beautiful and loaded with information about how the landscape has been moulded over the last 200 years, the book is introduced with a reflection on the British landscape by popular journalist, Jonathan Glancey, with extended captions and accompanied at the back with an interview with the photographer.

Edition Chris Boot