The Wolds Project

The Wolds Project

I am starting a new project. I have decided to photograph the Wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It is one of my favourite places. The Wolds lack the drama of the Moors or the majesty of the Dales but have an incredibly subtle fragile beauty. They are a lonely quiet place. Be cycling there mid-week and the only cars you will see seem to be the postman or the delivery van, criss crossing down long lonely lanes. The whole area feels like it is locked in another decade – the 30's? the 50's?

The Wolds are chalk, so most of the houses are made not of stone, but brick. This only adds to the weird feel of the place. It is not pretty-pretty, it is barely touched by tourists, and it is not easy to photograph. This ruined church is made of old red brick for example.

Perhaps the strangest aspect of it is this; most places you look to the high ground to find the bleak, the dramatic and lonely the majestic. People are in the valleys, on the plains, the drama is up above. In the Wolds it is the other way round. Up on top are the fields, the roads, the villages [Hugate, Wetwang, Fimber, Fridaythorpe – the names are something else]. It is down in the dry chalk valleys that the mystery is to be found. Too steep to be cultivated, seeing someone else in these dales is rare. Up above you the tractors can be heard lumbering around, but down here in the dales there is a timeless feel to the steep grassland, the dry swathes up the bottom of the valley, the Kites, deer, buzzards, cowslips, the butterflies. Such a fragile beauty is so hard to capture, but that is what I am attempting.

So far I have about ten shots that have made the cut, I will run them on the blog to see what the reaction is. The aim is to have a show of them sometime in the future.