Chloe Dewe Matthews

I first came across the work of Chloe Dewe Matthews when she was recommended to me by a fellow student.  It was felt that the style of her landscape work, especially in the series Shot at Dawn, resembled what I was trying to achieve.  The concept behind this body of work, however, is far removed from mine except in one instance: the way the land holds a memory of past events.  I have gained inspiration from Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory for my work.  Every landscape represents a story through time, including the layered history of human activity and contact with nature described by Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory.  My body of work is based on walking which enables me to meditate on the memories and myths of past ages that the land and people hold as Simon Schama describes.  In Dewe Matthews's work she visits sites where soldiers were shot at dawn for desertion, 100 years ago during World War I.  In Sean O'Hagan's (2014) article for the Guardian he writes that " This ordinary-looking landscape is imbued with a melancholic power because of what happened there on a cold February morning in 1916. It is the place where Private James Crozier was executed."  In this series of photographs Dewe Matthews photographs many of the sites where around 1000 soldiers were shot for desertion, all 100 years later and all taken at dawn.  A hugely poignant and melancholic project.  Many of the images reflect this being taken during the winter at dawn when the light is often quiet and subdued.  In her interview with O'Hagan (2014) she alludes to her reluctance to take the series as she had no personal connection to it, but decoded that it was the opposite of war photography where the photographer bears witness to the events being recorded.  Here the photographer records the land which witnessed the events.  She felt that it was a case of having to find a new language or way of seeing.  She tells of one man she met who was born not long after an execution had happened in a yard on his family's farm.  He reports that the event lingered in the local imagination, and cast a shadow over the land and the family for years afterwards.

Fig 1

Other work tends to social documentary and includes series devoted to exploring how people worship on a Sunday, the plight of the indigenous population in Xinjiang, China (China's Wild West), A project documenting the area of the almost dried up inland Aral Sea (Aral: A Dammed Sea), A series on banger racing (Banger Boys of Britain), Hasidic Jews on holiday in Aberystwyth (Hasidic Holiday),  Curiosities, as it title says, Not Waving but Drowning - a project on sea swimming which appears as if she is in the water with the swimmer much like Andreas Muller-Pohle did in his Danube Project.

Photographers Talking.  Choe Dewe Matthews on Documentary Photography

I had heard about Chloe Dewe Mathews, looked at her work and done some research and originally posted this blog before I came across the excellent OCA production Photographers Talking featuring her talking about her work.  I found it both illuminating and enjoyable and reinforced what I had found in my earlier research.  It would be good to see other talks of this nature.  I was especially interested to hear how her world trip came about and how she selected the projects she worked on.  Below are the main highlights I picked out from her talk.

·         She talks of a slow way of photojournalism

·         As a 19 year old student she felt that she was quite inward looking and didn't have anything to say about the world.  She felt that it took 10 years to become the creative person who made the decisions.

·         Initially she worked in fine art as a sculptor and then moved into film, before becoming a photographer's assistant.

·         She felt that Documentary photography gave her a way of looking outwards and engaging with the world.  She wanted to make work that sparked interest.

·         her first project was Hasidic Jews on Holiday while still working as an assistant.  She wanted to respond to what she was seeing (family holidays) without making them seem strange or exotic.  She spent a couple of summers on the project offering images as in incentive for being photographed.

·         The next project was Banger Boys of Britain.  She discovered banger racing almost by accident and then visited races all over the south of England, enjoying the colour, light and noise.  She was entranced by the sculptural beauty of the cars

·         As she was not getting published she decided to invest £1000 putting on her own exhibition in an old car workshop.  No editors/publishers turned up, but she sold 3 images at £350 and so broke even and felt some resolution

·         She decided to on a long trip to look for projects and so flew to China and hitch hiked home over 10 months,  She wanted to slow down and look for 'different' material.  Using medium format with only 140 films also help her to slow down.  She practised editing before shooting to avoid the machine gun approach. 

·         While she was away Hasidic Jewish Holiday was published by the Sunday Times.

·         The main bodies of work to emerge from the trip were China's Wild West, Caspian and Aral: A Dammed Sea.

·         In Caspian Sea she was inspired by the landscape, colours, people and the oil industry.  She was looking for something different and was inspired by the new mausoleums in graveyards being built with the wealth from oil.  Also by the use of oil baths in a sanatorium as a health cure.  Mentioned by Marco Polo.

·         Once home the Sunday Times published the Caspian Sea work and then followed new commissions and a BJP award.  A second exhibition was funded.  Although it is good to have more work published, a gallery exhibition is a more immersive experience.  A fellowship at Harvard and a residency at St John's College, Oxford followed.

·         Shot at Dawn.  Commissioned by Oxford.  At first knew very little of WWI so a good challenge.  On fact finding trip came across the fact of soldiers shot at dawn for desertion/cowardice.  Shocked by her own lack of knowledge and also by how the facts had been covered up until fairly recently.

·         She was interested in the idea that we project onto landscapes, giving the landscape a memory.  Ref. Simon Schama.

·         There were different outcomes for the project: book, exhibitions, dedicated website, Guardian article and online site.

·         Her latest commission if from the Tate about African churches in Southwark: Sunday Service.  Interested in the shift in the visual landscape on a Sunday when the congregation are all out in their finery.

·         Again she is interested in the layering of the history of the place.  All of the churches were once industrial buildings.  There has been a shift: industrial space has  is now being used for religious space.  This work led to a Tate exhibition.

I find the way Chloe Dewe Matthews is interested in the layering of history and the way that landscape has memory in Sunday Service and Shot at Dawn fascinating.  I have used this concept in my own work, but wonder how I could do so more.  One way that inspires me is photographing the old WWII airfields that proliferate in Lincolnshire as they are now and linking this back to their war time use.  Both in my contextual studies  and my body of work I am interested in Wilderness and any form in which it still exists in Lincolnshire, thinking particularly of the Edgelands wilderness of Paul Farlely and Michael Symmons Roberts.

O'Hagan, S. (2014) Chloe Dewe Matthews's Shot at Dawn: a moving photographic memorial [online] The Guardian Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/29/chloe-dewe-mathews-shot-at-dawn-moving-photographic-memorial-first-world-war [Accessed 21.3.16]

Open College of the Arts (2016) Photographers Talking.  Chloe Dewe Matthews on Documentary Photography. [online] Available from: http://www.oca-student.com/comment/81285#comment-81285 [Accessed 24.3.16]

Fig 1.  Dewe Matthews, C. (2013) Private James Crozier. 07:05/27.2.1916. Le Domaine des Cordeliers, Mailly-Maillet, Picardie [photograph] [online image] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/29/chloe-dewe-mathews-shot-at-dawn-moving-photographic-memorial-first-world-war [Accessed 21.3.16]