The Intimate & Immediate Landscape: A Creative Communion by Nick Collard
“The Intimate and Immediate Landscape” is photography as a spiritual practice in visual sensitivity, and long-term observation. As a project, it is at once an homage to the square-mile or so of land it was created in and an expression of both a spiritual relationship between myself and it and a spiritual search ongoing within me.
The creation process included many hours, over a span of 5 months, of near-daily pilgrimage, slowly walking, looking, and feeling, making pictures. By subjecting my mind to the land, by tracking its movements through the seasons, and by devoting my creative energy to it, I hoped to become more familiar with its aura, its essence. And while I succeeded in becoming more aware of the landscape, I also experienced deeper and deeper treks into my own mind.
To paraphrase and borrow a few words from Josef Moucha that resonated with me in a powerful way and seriously informed my conceptual process, “what I see here in these images is not the actual, real, physical objects themselves but rather reflections of their being felt.”
It is through this lens that I hope you will view my work.
—Nethery/Buller Breezeway, April–May 2021