Jem Southam
				British, born 1950
		Website about the artist: no website
			Introduction
			Jem Southam is one of the key figures in British photography of the last twenty years. Southam was shortlisted for the prestigious Citibank Photography Prize in 2001 alongside Roni Horn, Hellen van Meene and Boris Mikhailov, and is the winner of several international awards. His work is in numerous collections including the V&A, the British Council and the Government Art Collection. Jem Southam’s photographs of the natural world capture the landscape in a continual state of flux. His work catalogues the effects of time, climate and man on the land. He combines the results into poetic series around the theme of man and nature. In "The Shape of Time" he focuses on the changes to which nature exposes itself. Pools fill up and dry out. Estuaries are the scene of battles between the water streaming down rivers and the tides. Rocky coasts erode under the influence of wind and weather and the ebb and flow of tides. The changes take place within several hours or over many years. Man can only look on. Southam returns repeatedly over months or years to the same carefully selected sites, painstakingly creating a frame by frame record of the patterns of change. Southam uses a large 10" by 8" camera meaning that the work can be reproduced on a relatively large scale, with particular sharply focused detail. During the 1980s Southam helped to transform established photographic views and traditions with a colour imagery that expressed a new critical awareness of the medium and a desire to break with the past. Drawing on a wide range of ideas and influences, particularly from Germany and the US, Southam’s work was part of a new internationalism in British photography. Since 1981 Southam’s photographic work has developed through five main series, Bristol City Docks (1977-84), Paintings of West Cornwall (1982-86), The Red River (1982-87), The Raft of Carrots (1992) and The Shape of Time: Rockfalls Rivermouths and Ponds (2000). He has also produced three highly acclaimed books; The Red River, Rockfalls Rivermouths Ponds, and The Raft of Carrots.