One of the benefits of being an academic in Grahamstown is the opportunity for travel and internationalisation. I’ve really benefitted from this with long-term projects in Scandinavia – particularly Sweden. In most years I spend several weeks from the end of August to early October in the three Swedish municipalities of Falun, Uddevalla and Trollhättan.
So the next few pictures will feature Swedish scenes as that is where I am based for the next six weeks. This one is taken at night in the old quarter of Falun – it’s a world heritage site. I’m standing on the Magasingatan (warehouse road) bridge over the Faluån. This distinguished old building uses slag and clinker from the famous Falu mine as its foundations. There were two devastating fires in 1761 that destroyed most of the wooden built structures in the town so this method was introduced to prevent fire risk.
RODDY FOX
Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature’ and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa.
His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.
His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.