Jem Southam
Fantastic photographer who has developed a programmatic exploration of the south coast of England. I first saw his work at the Spacex in Exeter, and caught up with it again recently at the Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park. Currently Southam is showing at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York and the site contains a good selection of the work well presented. The Exhibition at the Pump House has an associated publication entitled “Shape of Time: Rockfalls, Rivermouths, Ponds”, Photoworks, 2000.
Southam acknowledges a debt to Robert Smithson in his work. Southam explores the unnoticed and continuous process of natural change in the environment. He focuses on rockfalls from coastal cliffs, the rise and fall of the tides, and the recovery of man made changes to the landscape by nature. There is a clear interest in the natural rhythm and one aspect of the work is the use of photography to evidence the process of change over a range of different time scales.
CHRIS FREMANTLE 
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