Photography and the Sublime – an illustrated photo-talk by Thomas Peck

Last Tuesday evening when Thomas Peck finished talking one of the Society’s member’s asked if we could all turn our microphones back on.  This request was met with spontaneous applause that rang out across all our screens as we all thanked Thomas for such a great evening.

Thomas’ presentation talked about the influences of landscape painters and how their work now affects Landscape photography.  The Photographic Sublime - how artistic traditions of the Sublime influence photography of the past, present, and future…

Thomas Peck showed us how the traditions of the Sublime influenced early landscape photographers through to the modern day. With examples from painters like Turner & Caspar David Friedrich and photographs from Carleton E Watkins to M Kenna to S Salgado to A Adams to H Sugimoto, plus some of his own outstanding pictures.

It was a fascinating insight into a cultural trend which will provoke some debate, especially when we look into the future at how photography and the Sublime might interact in the 21st century.

Thank you Thomas for such an inspiring talk and we hope to see you in person at Norwich in the not to distant future.

Here is Thomas and three of the images he showed.

As we all know the government’s policy of self-isolation to tackle the spread of the coronavirus has meant that meetings of the Society each Tuesday evening at the Methodist Hall have been replaced for the time being with ‘virtual’ meetings. 

No, it is not the same as being able to all meeting, but it has enabled us to all stay in touch and maintain a little normality each Tuesday evening. It is great to see that so many members join in via Skype with attendances nearly three quarters of the average weekly attendance at the Methodist Hall.

The In Focus team is currently working through a host of ideas so keep an eye out on the website for details of the virtual meetings in the coming weeks