Robert Darch
Vale (Series)
DESCRIPTION
As I lay in the ambulance watching the birds, dark black cut-outs stencilled against the white haze of the sky, a calm came over me as my mind slowly dimmed and lost control. In 2001 aged twenty-two I was diagnosed as having had a minor stroke.
This episode led to a long period of ill health and It would take close to a decade to fully recover and resume a ‘normal’ life.
Vale is in part a nostalgic reinterpretation of summer, youth and the freedom associated with that time, though seen through tainted eyes. The warmth of the Summer is tempered by an internal melancholy of loss and the poetic narrative is in direct response to the emotions, feelings and thoughts cultivated during the period of isolation I experienced. The work therefore sustains a constant dichotomy between the perceived beauty of the landscape and an underlying feeling of unease, tension, sadness and loss. Although within the series, youth and beauty is romanticised, there is an obvious disconnection between the people and the landscape, often appearing uneasy, lost or scared within it. The work blends fictional constructs with documentary images to create a subjective narrative and a sustained atmosphere of unease.
AUTHOR
I am a photographer based in the South West of England. I recently graduated from Plymouth University gaining a Masters with Distinction in Photography & the Book and I am currently studying for an MFA in photography at Plymouth University.
Previously I graduated from Newport with a Honours Degree in Documentary Photography, though became unwell (triggered by a minor stroke) during my studies and subsequently was unable to work on any sustained projects after graduating. Almost a decade later and now fully recovered the Masters allowed me the time to reengage with a photographic practice that I had started to develop ten years earlier.
I have a particular interest in the experience of place, and construct fictional narratives that help contextualise a personal perception of those spaces. As well as the physical locations, this subjectivisation of place is also influenced by contemporary culture, memory and imagination, blurring that liminal space between fiction and reality.
Awards - Shortlisted for Hyeres festival 2016
Recently Published
Juxtapoz Magazine - 2016
Fotografia Magazine - 2015
Selektor Magazine - 2015
Recent Exhibitions
This Is Not A Dream - Peninsula Arts, Plymouth, England - 2015
Beyond The Camera - Pingyao International Photography Festival, China - 2015
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