James Ravilious Tony Cearns
A personal reflection
James Raviliious, a quiet photographer.
In an era of self-referentiality a ‘quiet photograph’1 can have much to commend it. There is a simple and rare pleasure in looking at photographs whose subjects are allowed to present themselves as they are, unposed. On the part of the subjects, no acting, no hamming, no forcing of things beyond themselves. On the part of the photographer, a pursuit of craft as art 2 .
I’m of course referring to James Ravilious (‘JR’), for whom the craft of photography formed the basis of artistic merit.
For him, no photographic embellishment underpinned by a dodgy artist’s statement; no forcing of an issue; no shouty pretensions. JR made photographs in an un-sensational way which allows the viewer to be drawn into a narrative, albeit one of the viewer’s design.
His photographs document the disappearing world of 1970s and 1980s north Devon, providing a rich visual ethnographic record and all that good stuff. However, they also make us want to ‘belong’to some place. We see in JR’s work a celebration of (a yearning for?) community and meaningful relationships, perhaps as a result of their absence in his early boarding school life 3. We enter his photographs perhaps with a felt but unthought sense of dislocation, for 40 years on a special sense of belonging to a place seems hard won.
JR’s photography expresses ‘mood’and it is this that makes it compelling. What we think about the world is already a result of us being tuned into what matters, as Heidegger taught. What matters is governed by mood. Mood co-constitutes the content of our experience. JR’s photographic techniques pre-dispose us to seeing his photographs in a certain way before we even start to think about them.
Few photographers pull this off so consistently. JR understood, perhaps instinctively, those visual features that give rise to the invocation of moods4, as certainly did his early mentor, Cartier-Bresson.
One cannot look at JR’s photographs without noticing his impeccable sense of timing:
‘Alf Pugsley moving a shed in case of flood, Lower Langham, Dolton, February 1978’: Photograph by James Ravilious © BeafordArts digitally scanned from a BeafordArchive negative.
Cartier-Bresson made much of ‘the decisive moment’5, and Lartigue, ‘the caught moment’. But there is more to timing than time! There is also structure.As CartierBresson said,
‘In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it’(my emphasis).
‘GeorgeAyre with hay for sheep,Ashwell, Dolton, February 1978’: Photograph by James Ravilious © BeafordArts digitally scanned from a BeafordArchive negative.
And in ‘Lower Gunstone’we can imagine JR waiting ‘like an angler’for the right elements to coalesce into the right structure:
‘Lower Gunstone, Bideford, July 1983’: Photograph by James Ravilious © BeafordArts digitally scanned from a Beaford Archive negative.
Much has been made of JR’s camera technique: his use of uncoated Leitz lenses, the creative inclusion of lens flare, the taming of deep contrast with compensatory developers all add to a signature look:
As beautiful as this signature look is6, JR’s success is really grounded in the relationships that he built. For sure his camera technique contributed to his Millet-like images, but the real work that James Ravilious put in was the countless hours he spent over many years in becoming accepted and therefore invisible. His mentor, Cartier-Bresson achieved this through stealth and looking inconspicuous. But Cartier-Bresson moved through a scene never to be visited again. Ravilious visited his locations many times and, in so doing, became part of the community he photographed. Sometimes the best place to hide is to be in full view, to be part of the natural order and therefore in tune.
Afavourite photographer of mine, Gordon Parks, once exhorted ‘Make pictures that matter!’JR achieved this. Someone in 100 years time will look at his photographs and, like me, be moved.
I would like to thank the trustees of BeafordArts for the free use of JR’s photographs from the BeafordArchive and in particular Olivia Riley at the BeafordArchive who was extremely helpful. The BeafordArchive holds digital scans of the 1,700 negatives which James Ravilious regarded as his finest work. It is slowly uploading 10,000 unseen (until now!) photographs by Ravilious and Deakins and are about half way through a 3 year digitisation project to make the archive more accessible.
I would like to thank Robin Ravilious, JR’s wife, for the generous support she gave me in this short article.
Robin has written a magnificent book portraying both James’s life before she met him and their life together afterwards: ‘James Ravilious,ALife‘, by Robin Ravilious, published Wilmington Press, an imprint of Bitter Lemon Press, 2017. It is an honest account of their lives, both ups and downs, which I enjoyed reading immensely.
As a photographer myself, I have been inspired by JR’s photographs. In this regard I have studied the photographs selected by John Hatt in the book ‘The Recent Past, James Ravilious‘, with an introduction by Robin Ravilious (published 02/11/17, Wilmington Press, an imprint of Bitter Lemon Press). This is a very thoughtful collection, beautifully reproduced.
footnotes
1 The Pleasures of Good Photographs, essays by Gerry Badger;Aperture, 2010: — “The primary characteristic of the “quiet” photograph is that it should appear to be “without author or art. That is to say, transparency is its main objective. The photograph should seem to be a direct and unmediated transcription of the scene before the camera, as if taken, indeed, by the unaided camera. The quiet photographer, therefore, interferes as little as possible with his subject”.
2After the manner of Gropius, in which harmony of composition includes ‘structure, finishing, ornamentation, and furnishing’.
3 See ‘James Ravilious;ALife‘ by Robin Ravilious; Bitter Lemon Press, London; 2017
4 In this regard, I refer the reader to the extensive literature concerning gestalt forms, affordance and the salience network.
5 In 1952 Cartier-Bresson published ‘Images à la Sauvette’, which approximately translates as ‘images on the run’. Cartier-Bresson cites 17th century Cardinal de Retz, who said ‘Il n’y a risen dans ce monde qui n’air un moment decisif’.
6 Of course, this scan from a print does not do justice to the tonalities and textures of the actual print
