For his latest book, Fragile, Paul Hart has stepped away from the documentary approach of his previous projects into something more personal. Ailsa McWhinnie finds out more
The introduction to photographer Paul Hart’s latest book, Fragile, features a poem by American poet Helene Johnson (1906-1995). Titled Trees at Night, it includes descriptions such as ‘lacy arms’, ‘stilly sleeping lake’, ‘torn webs of shadows’ and ‘trembling beauty’. As you leaf through the 51 richly detailed black & white plates in the publication, these words – and more – echo time and time again. The images are imbued with an all-encompassing sense of stillness, as seen in the pin-sharp reflections of trees in water, the electricity pylons that dissolve into the mist-engulfed distance, and the vanishing points of reed-flanked trenches and footpaths through fields.
Fragile is Hart’s fifth monograph, and follows his Fenland Trilogy, which was made up of Farmed, Drained and Reclaimed. All three are studies of the Fens, the region covering Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and parts of Norfolk and Suffolk that is characterised by flatness, farming and fertile land. Fragile takes a step sideways from these, and while it still features the big skies, solitary trees and distant horizons that those familiar with Hart’s work will recognise, it also takes a more intimate, detailed look at his surroundings. ‘I think it was a bit Covid influenced,’ Hart explains. ‘I’d had that time away from everything, like everyone had, and I found myself slowing down. It came out of that. It’s more personal, more emotional and more subjective. The books on the Fens had one foot in the documentary camp, but this is far less so.’
He describes it as being more exploratory. Whereas previously, he imposed a boundary on his projects, photographing nothing outside the area of the Fens, this time he was able to be more expansive. ‘I was more interested in taking a broader approach,’ he says, ‘and whereas before I always had it in mind that I was trying to describe a particular place, this time it was more a case that if I saw something interesting, I tried to photograph it. It was still related to nature, and the landscape and land, of course, but this time I was photographing a bit more for myself. A lot of it was close to my home, which isn’t normally the case.’
Creative process
Hart talks interestingly about the process of transitioning from one project to another. It can be trickier than we might imagine for the creative side of the brain to bring an end to one body of work and start ‘seeing’ the next one. ‘When I started, a lot of the images I shot were more akin to what I’d done before,’ he recalls. ‘I printed them, but didn’t use them in the end. It was as if one foot was in the Fens, so to speak, but that changed as time went on; I started to feel a bit closer to
