Sarah Clarke of The Torbay Bookshop reviews the latest releases.
The Promise of the Wolves, the first of a trilogy by Dorothy Hearst, begins 14,000 years ago in what is now Southern Europe and introduces us to Kaala, a young she-wolf. In this mythical land humans and wolves are never allowed to interact so when Kaala saves a girl from drowning she sets in motion events that could threaten the existence of all her species. This is of one of those stories which really draws the reader in and a must for those who enjoyed The Clan of the Cave Bear and Watership Down.
Promise of the Wolves, Dorothy Hearst, Simon and Schuster, £12.99, 9781847373274
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If you liked this story, you could buy us a coffee
August 14th, 2008
Mike Smallcombe’s latest piece of work is set to open at the Centre of Contemporary Art and the Natural World at Haldon Forest on September 5. Lee Morgan caught up with him not long after he won the eco photography prize
The images in Mike Smallcombe’s photographs could inhabit the outer borders of reality. The picture that won him the ink2paper photography award in the eco (Exeter Contemporary Open), organised by the Exeter Phoenix, is a wicker-bound and masked figure perched on his throne-like chair in a forest clearing.
It’s a decidedly eerie figure, which seems more paused than at rest.
‘I made the figure in the chair and I had intended to burn it and photograph that.’ Instead he put a mask on it, and ‘it instantly had its own personality’. The model is a two-thirds scale of Mike himself, adding perhaps to its humanity.
The photograph is part of a big project Mike’s about to start, which is loosely based on our ancestral fears.
‘We’re bombarded with urban imagery, but our subconscious has a rural past and people are still afraid of woods – not that there’s anything in them now. But people still have that fear – they still think twice before going into the woods in the dark.’
The project has people and things displaced in the landscapes. ‘I’m not interested in documentary,’ he says and highlights the resonance of watered down Jungian archetypes – scarlet woman, white virgin, black witch.
Fourteen years ago while searching for a home away from his London-based commercial photography business, Mike decided against village life and went whole hog for the middle of nowhere in mid-Devon.
‘Most people here are not from round here,’ he says of Devon. ‘And the attitude to the countryside is changing. With the urban view, the countryside is a commodity – something to buy. There’s a lot more to it than that.
‘And there are people around here living on tiny farms, scratching livings of £5,000 a year.’
Mike’s notebook for his future project is filled with sketches or forest clearings, the organisation of the natural world, and people merging into their rural environment while being foreign within it.
Dorthea Lange’s work is mentioned quite a lot, and although her work was documentary, it had the element of people and nature colliding, creating a whole subset of society in the American Dust Bowl of that country’s 1930s depression.
Last year Mike showed some of his pictures in Chagford from a trip to the Sahara and raised enough money to run a school for a year. ‘I’ve been to the Sahara a few times and I’m fascinated by the Tuareg – the people of the desert – who live in Niger and Mali (amongst other places).
‘The Dogon region of Mali is full of mysterious festivals, and you would come across a bowl of millet or monkey skulls. I’m keen on the dislocation of the man-made in the natural world and of human intervention.’
The interaction of photographic medium with fantastic imagery will make people look twice.
‘It’s like knowing the tune and forgetting the words,’ he says.
If you liked this story, you could buy us a coffee
August 14th, 2008
