Description

In 2010 Peter Marlow undertook ‘a kind of reflective pilgrimage’, in photographing the naves of each of England’s 42 Anglican cathedrals. As a contemporary return to the tradition of church photography in England, particularly the work of Frederick Evans and Edwin Smith, Peter’s typologies were taken in natural light at dawn, capturing the luminosity of each interior as daylight emerged from behind the altar.

The task was a considerable challenge and Peter was particularly concerned that the scale should be right. Peter said: “It was important for me to keep a sense of the relative size of each nave, since some were enormous and others not. To do this, I used exactly the same elevation on the ladders and tripod, and kept the lens at a constant focal length.”

Pictured here is Coventry Cathedral, also known as St Michael’s, England.

By blending observation and wit with reason, I want my work to generate a sense of the unexpected, the hidden, and the seemingly spontaneous

Peter Marlow
Peter Marlow | Magnum Photos

Although gifted in the language of photojournalism, Peter Marlow was not a photojournalist. He was initially, however, one of the most enterprising and successful young British news photographers, and in 1976 joined the Sygma agency in Paris. He soon found that he lacked the necessary appetite for the job while on assignment in Lebanon and Northern Ireland during the late 1970s.

After those days, Marlow’s aesthetic shifted – in that he made mainly color photographs – but his approach was unchanged. The color of incidental things became central to his pictures in the same way that the shape and mark of things had been central to his black-and-white work. Marlow had come full circle.

He started his career as an international photojournalist, returned to Britain to examine his own experience, and discovered a new visual poetry that enabled him to understand his homeland Having found this poetry, he took it back on the road: he photographed as much in Japan, the USA and elsewhere in Europe as he did in the UK. Peter Marlow died in 2016.

© Peter Marlow | Magnum Photos

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