Simon Roberts travelled throughout England in a motorhome between August 2007 and September 2008, for this portfolio of large-format tableaux photographs of the English at leisure. Photographing ordinary people engaged in a variety of pastimes, Roberts finds beauty in the mundane; the result is an elegiac exploration of identity, attachment to home and land, and the relationship between people and place. This is the most significant contribution to the photography of England in recent years." Chris Boot, Publisher
http://we-english.co.uk/gallery.html
Reviews:
“The first place he photographed was the beach at Skegness in Lincolnshire, where people have holidayed since the nineteenth century. It’s a bit grim. The sky is overcast and the water brown, there is litter and everyone is bundled up, wearing coats. The scene is mundane and familiar to many, but Roberts has managed to bring a lyrical quality to it. The sea and sky are huge, the view is elevated and looking down we get a vast sense of space….There are two stories in his photographs: one is everyday, the other is eternal.”
Hannah Duguid, The Independent, 1st October 2009
“Low and leaden skies, grey rain-streaked beaches, toxic-looking yellow stubble in farmers’ fields, caravan parks hoisting the flag of St George and the assorted leisure activities of the Great British public: shooting a birds, car boot sales, mud races and Derby Day. The influence of past masters is evident, but Roberts’s wide-open images allow in as much landscapes as possibly. This shows we leisure-practitioners in context, organic elements within a larger canvas. We look as dull as the topography and weather, occasionally lit up by a Turner-esque ray of sunshine. While Roberts is not the first to find beauty in bleakness, or in the mundane, even moronic, weekend habits of the English, he brings to the treatment an irony-free and lovingly meditative gaze.”
Chris Morris, Timeout London, 22-28 October 2009
“We English has all the hallmarks of a great body of work by a photographer of considerable depth. It shuns the flashy “in-yer-face” tactics so commonplace in favour of quiet thought and subtle observation. It is work that repays the reader through frequent re-examination: full of humour, but more subtle than Erwitt; full of commentary, but less judgemental than Parr; full of beauty, but without cliché.”
Michael Cockerham, Blue Filter, October 2009
Personally I think this body of work shows the English with all our quirkyness, spots and all, out for a day to enjoy ourselves. The British way is to put up with the weather, take it as we find it and get on with it! Simon Roberts shows it warts and all and I think that the true British spirit will be lost soon and his work records our indomitable spirit whatever fate and the weather throws at us
http://we-english.co.uk/gallery.html
Reviews:
“The first place he photographed was the beach at Skegness in Lincolnshire, where people have holidayed since the nineteenth century. It’s a bit grim. The sky is overcast and the water brown, there is litter and everyone is bundled up, wearing coats. The scene is mundane and familiar to many, but Roberts has managed to bring a lyrical quality to it. The sea and sky are huge, the view is elevated and looking down we get a vast sense of space….There are two stories in his photographs: one is everyday, the other is eternal.”
Hannah Duguid, The Independent, 1st October 2009
“Low and leaden skies, grey rain-streaked beaches, toxic-looking yellow stubble in farmers’ fields, caravan parks hoisting the flag of St George and the assorted leisure activities of the Great British public: shooting a birds, car boot sales, mud races and Derby Day. The influence of past masters is evident, but Roberts’s wide-open images allow in as much landscapes as possibly. This shows we leisure-practitioners in context, organic elements within a larger canvas. We look as dull as the topography and weather, occasionally lit up by a Turner-esque ray of sunshine. While Roberts is not the first to find beauty in bleakness, or in the mundane, even moronic, weekend habits of the English, he brings to the treatment an irony-free and lovingly meditative gaze.”
Chris Morris, Timeout London, 22-28 October 2009
“We English has all the hallmarks of a great body of work by a photographer of considerable depth. It shuns the flashy “in-yer-face” tactics so commonplace in favour of quiet thought and subtle observation. It is work that repays the reader through frequent re-examination: full of humour, but more subtle than Erwitt; full of commentary, but less judgemental than Parr; full of beauty, but without cliché.”
Michael Cockerham, Blue Filter, October 2009
Personally I think this body of work shows the English with all our quirkyness, spots and all, out for a day to enjoy ourselves. The British way is to put up with the weather, take it as we find it and get on with it! Simon Roberts shows it warts and all and I think that the true British spirit will be lost soon and his work records our indomitable spirit whatever fate and the weather throws at us
