English Landscapes 
Jean-Pierre Gilson, Dewi Lewis, £35

WE lament the loss of a tree at Sycamore Gap at Hadrian’s Wall: seeing it now as just Gap — two shoulders of hill without its vertical.  

Plans for regrowth say something about our hope for the future, that future generations will be around to see the beauty of the armatures, the filigree of branches and twigs, and the hope that some vandal won’t hack at it again with the wantonness of corporate vandalism.  

A new collection of the French photographer John Pierre Gilson’s work is a beautiful monochrome record of the English landscape, from West Country lanes to Cumbrian hills.  

Now in his seventies, his photography embraces (literally) Scotland, Ireland, Territories of France and The Somme 1916-2016.  

I once asked an archaeologist why it took so long to excavate the Somme and he told me that it took 90 years for human cells to stop interacting with bio-organisms in the mud. This isn’t a gratuitous point, but indicates our actual cellular and emotional relationship with landscape. 

This is what we feel in Gilson’s work. It has emotional knowledge. 

There’s a fine forward from William Boyd who points out that landscape photography is difficult to do because of its associations with fine art representations in painting. 

Let’s remember how modern landscape painting is. One of the leading critics of the day stood in front of a John Constable in the Royal Academy, saying: “Please take away this nasty green thing.”

The role of painting within the Establishment was to record the deeds and portraits of the great and good, not landscape. 

Boyd also says: “It’s very hard for a coloured photograph of a landscape to compete with a painted version of it.” 

Why is this?  Surely the photograph will record correctly — but then so does the retina. Boyd’s point is that the painting has the hand and eye of the artist who brings something new to it — her/his own vitality and vision.

Look at Samuel Palmer’s vivid, almost surreal landscapes showing us his truth of what is there. Likewise Turner and Constable. Colour photographs can’t compete with this. 

Yet the monochrome photograph brings its own newness and aesthetic. 

The photos of Jean Pierre Gilson are sublime. Many of them are taken in winter when the ground is damp or waterlogged and clouds are thick; full of atmosphere, you can almost smell them. These are more than “views” — places we can see with our own eyes.  

True, the world is not in black and white, but photography of the skill of Gilson’s brings out the astonishing delicacy of trees, earth, water and sky, detail and texture without colour getting in the way. Aesthetics too, the golden mean, the rule of three — the vanishing point. 

Gilson’s photographs are deeply satisfying — and we could never see these places in black and white, unless we were cats.   

The landscape of wherever we were born and grew remains deep with in us. It helps us form relationships and supports us if when alone. Deep in my mind vaults are Merle Common and Staffhurst Wood in Surrey, sources of berries, nuts and flowers, friendships, health, emotional growth and the imagination. 

So back to the gap at Sycamore Gap.  

Funny, no sycamore — would we call somewhere just a gap? A void more like, but the mind will always put it back there.