Max A Rush, Park Landscape Photographer
I’ve been photographing London parks for over 15 years. One snowy morning in Brockwell Park led to the first pictures I was really pleased with and as I began to look closer I soon lost most of my desire to escape the capital for true countryside. I enjoy a break in the mountains every now and then but I have access to the very best weather back at home, where I can rush out at short notice. I’ve always wanted to embrace the human dimension in parks, whether in the form of formal planting or park architecture. These aren’t natural landscapes, but they are enveloped in natural weather, which is the one connection I need to the wilderness.
I try to be simultaneously naturalist and artist, drawing on each to the ends of the other. Many of my pictures illustrate some aspect of plantlife or horticulture, but the most interesting element for me is the atmosphere. The interaction of sunlight, clouds and other forms of water in the air create endless visual phenomena, some familiar to all of us and some rare and obscure. Minutes can change the colour and tone of a scene in drastic ways, transforming the world from the mundane to the fantastic, while also revealing little secrets about the physical nature of light itself.
In recent years I’ve added a significant and increasingly transformative element to my photography - my own design of cameras. Having spent a few years using large format film, I wanted a way of combining the unique controls of the large format camera with the advantages of digital photography. The result was the Rush Oak View Camera, which began as a prototype made of floorboards (with which I’ve made most of my serious pictures over the last two years) and now exists in a more polished and improved version made of wood from Richmond Park trees. This is a story in its own right though, which you can read on this separate page:
Spectacles of nature in the cold light of day
I can’t be out photographing for long hours these days - I’m busy with many different art projects and with my family. However when I do rush out it’s generally because I think there’s the chance of something extraordinary happening. I’m not very interested in clear blue skies, but heavy showers, thick fog or snow are full of possibilities, conventionally beautiful or unusual and mysterious. I suspect many viewers of my photographs assume that I indulge in quite a lot of digital enhancement, which is a long way from the truth. I couldn’t live with myself if I’d removed anything noticeable in an image or attempted to fabricate something I’d not genuinely witnessed. The entire process is actually highly traditional, and for all the convenience of digital photography, very similar to what I’d have done with sheet film: The digital back records a very accurate rendition of the projected image from a lens, which is then loaded into software for fine control of contrast and colour balance. I have to remove any sensor dust particles that create tiny spots on the image but otherwise what was recorded in the field is very close to what is presented as the final work. I mention all this because some of the things I see are so outlandish that they may seem unreal, and also because in the world of photography quite heavy manipulation is often accepted as normal practice. I don’t object to this in others’ work, but I happen to have a very strict set of rules about honesty which I find satisfying to follow. In many ways I just enjoy being a kind of purist, which is linked to the simplicity of looking at the world though a wooden camera.