Digital Camera World

Robin Friend

Published in 2018, Robin Friend’s book Bastard Countryside collects 15 years worth of exploration of the British landscape, dwelling on what Victor Hugo called the ‘bastard countryside’: “somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures”. Robin’s large-format colour images scrutinise these in-between, unkempt, and often surreal marginal areas of the country, highlighting frictions between the pastoral sublime and the discarded, often polluted reality of the present

Starting from a classical landscape tradition, Friend’s meticulous 5x4 photographs are given heightened effect through exaggerations of colour and composition, embodying a friction between British pastoral ideals and present reality. In particular, Robin follows moments in which the expected narrative of the landscape is rudely interrupted: often through leakage, pollution, or the wreckage and containment of nature.

Martin Parr: When and how did you get involved in photography?

I was given my first camera by my grandma when I was about 7 or 8. It was a funny-looking thing that took 110 film. I would use it in the backyard trying to get as close to nature as possible – there were a lot of blurry

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