“What Hughes is doing with both verses of his elegy is asking us –‘ to slow down to find the still small voice of calm that in the darkness may yet be visible.’
By challenging himself to work within traditional media, Hughes is able to extract through the silver halides…… a luminosity of light that is life itself : spiritual , fragile, and sublime.”
- Bill Kouwenhoven 2007.
In Darkness Visible 2005 – 2007
His luminous photographs could well be considered paintings in the sense that they are often multi-layered constructions. Yet they remain pure photography……Hughes is indeed both writing with light as the root of the word photography implies and using the camera as one of photography’s inventors, Henry Fox Talbot described it, “as the pencil of nature.”
Verse I
In reaction to media led sensory anaesthetisation, and wearied by empty political rhetoric, my aim was to construct a forest built from accumulated memory and the ghosts of trees. Spending a period of two winters’ visiting public spaces in central London, this work inverts decorative Arcadian layout in an attempt to restore a sense of the natural in the cultivated, somewhat synthetic city ‘wilderness’ spaces.
Verse II
Turner was moved by what he called “The weather in our souls” - he could see the universe in a rainstorm. This study of ocean currents found added gravitas through the weight of childhood familiarity.
This search for emblematic last points of light within ensuing darkness involved long periods of contemplation on the complexities of nature, from a familiar vantage point, finding company in the words of Thoreau in his retreat to the American wilderness of Walden:
“All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle, which is taking place every instant.”
Edge Verses I and II 2002 –2006
“Nicholas Hughes’ seascapes and snowscapes are calm and quiet; yet retain a deep underlying contemplative presence. His strong yet delicate photographs serve to show the fragility of our relationship with the natural world. Hughes’ work examines the space between the world that people inhabit and that which nature still claims as its own and in this intermediary space seeks to explore the essence of the human spirit and its relationship with nature. However his contemplation of the distant horizon is by no means a perpetuation of the Romantic. He sees the notion of the natural world as forever vast and mysterious, quickly evaporating. By focusing on boundaries, plains and surfaces he acknowledges the existence of limits. These are images that not only speak of the infinite character of the natural world but of the finite character of the world created by human nature.”
- David Low 2005
Immaterial 2000 – 2002
“To show things for what they are and what else they are.” Minor White
Taking domestic subject matter out of scale and allying it to formal concerns I began to approach that which I sought for - the dissolution of matter. Realising a more refined essence of expression through the isolation of detail and finding a universal aspect to the works symbolism. Agreeing with Dawn Perlmutter’s ‘Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art’ (1999) that in recent times, that which had proven to be the inspiration of countless practitioners since the birth of art had recently fallen from the agenda.
Works of this nature having been more prevalent in turbulent periods, the elevation of the everyday to a platform of contemplation seemed appropriate as the wider world appeared increasingly devoid of reason.
Biography
Nicholas Hughes is a London based artist who works mainly within his immediate location whether that be - central London, the British coastline, Switzerland or Germany. His work has recently been shown at ‘Landscape’, the 5th International Photo Festival in Seoul 2005, Paris Photo at the Carrousel de Louvre 2005 and at ‘Earth’ The Houston twentieth Biennial Fotofest in 2006. He has a solo show at the Photographers’ Gallery in London from September – November 2007. He has pursued a career as a photographic artist since obtaining a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in 1998 followed by a Master's Degree from the London College of printing in 2002. His work is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery in London and by Gana Art Center in Seoul and has been featured in numerous publications, including Next Level, Hotshoe International, the Photographer and the British Journal of Photography, and is held in photographic collections worldwide.
“Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but starts again when we are alone.”
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space).