Brad Feuerhelm - Nearest Truth - 2023
“The printing, design, and production are exquisite in Darch's case, and I think it is a book that people can find more than just politics. It is also worth noting that the reduced aspect of the design by Booth Woodger helps the book to remain a consistent slab and does not interfere with the mood.
Technically speaking, the work is laden with the melancholy mentioned above as it oscillates between interior spaces, shadows, and open landscapes. If I were to suggest another reference, it might be closer to the films of Bela Tarr, where waiting, pacing, and unmoveable structure, slowed at scale, are a significant part of the work. That being stated, I do not see Darch's efforts as cinematic. There is simply something of a similar feeling in the films of Tarr. The Island is a great book that will remain an elegant work of somber sobriety first and an epitaph of the glory of England's participation in Europe. Highly Recommended.” (Full review here)
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Rupert Loydell - International Times - 2023
“On Thursday 23 June 2016 the EU referendum took place and the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.’ So says the Gov.UK website, without comment or critique. It came up as the first return from an online search for the date, which is printed on the half title page of Robert Darch’s beautiful book of photographs. These two pages initially seem to be the only text, apart from some thank yous and publishing information inside the back cover, but a little more exploration reveals a prose text inside the front cover flap.
This – presumably designed as an introduction of sorts – is a moody story about the dull provincial life of an unnamed narrator, whose ‘town was about as far from anywhere as you could get, landlocked and lacking.’ It is one of many towns ‘where people’s lives were mapped out by circumstance and routine. All those people and the weight of their existence, nobody moving.’ This is contrasted with lyrics from a Fugazi song, where ‘Everybody’s moving, moving, moving, moving’ and the singer begs ‘Please don’t leave me to remain’.
Stasis is a constant throughout the text: regular visits to clubs, persistent downing of lager, constant rain, a crowded bus… but in the distance, the Malvern Hills, with a memory of camp and the view of a hidden, fogbound landscape. It is put aside as the bus trundles on, taking the narrator to college…
Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but the camp is named the British Camp, and its nostalgic allure is at odds with the desire to be moving, along with everyone else. It certainly sums up that mix of group memory of a fictional British past we are taught at school (free of colonialism, racism, abuse and violence) and the resulting xenophobia and snobbery directed against ‘others’: other countries, other races, other people, people with other ideas about how to eat, live or run their own nation.
The photographs in The Island reflect all these ideas. There are alluring misty landscapes, beached boats and a local train (perhaps even running on time?) and views out to sea. Live with these works a while, pay attention, however, and the images change into something else: a land of tired and stressed individuals, abandoned mines, factories and industrial buildings, damaged and dying nature, man made intrusions at odds with the world around them.
Houses are empty and overtaken with ivy; trees are dying, stripped of their bark or with their branches brutally lopped; nameless individuals and couple stare assertively at the camera, traverse or sit in the ruins they find themselves in. That boat pulled up on the beach turns out to be abandoned, that beach chalet looks uninhabitable, and when was the last time children played on those rusty, restrung swings? Another beach chalet which appears still in use has cushions piled high in the window, and several others spilt across the decking. And why are those people standing high in a bare winter tree? What can they see? Are they moving, moving, moving or watching others move? Or have they all been left behind?
This is a dark, monochrome book; a disturbing one, too. It depicts a country isolated from its neighbours, inhabited by worried and concerned young people who have been left with the ruins of the world they grew up in. What was promised never happened, has been taken away, and they can only look out of broken windows, from windswept beaches and stormswept cliffs, imagining past freedoms and denied possibilities. Three of the photographs are particularly poignant for me: a shovel stuck in tar on a concrete floor, a woman kneeling in a field with an impressive country house behind her that she will never inhabit, and the final photo of a desecrated tree, reduced to a stump of wood in the mist. The distant light in this and other photos, even the light at the end of the mine tunnel in one photo, offer little chance of illumination or a fulfilling future.
Darch’s stark photographs offer a persuasive kind of narrative or meta-narrative about how and where we live, post-Brexit, post-covid, how we have chosen isolation and ignorance over possibility and partnership. It is a disturbing, anxious and thought-provoking book that contradicts the preposterous notion that we are a civilized, affluent and caring society. It is not, however, didactic or polemical, it is a gathering up of persuasive and visual evidence where ‘nothing of the present seem[s] familiar anymore’. We are all shipwrecked and abandoned now.”
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Peter Dench - Amateur Photographer - 2023
“The work you make as a photographer is often a reflection of the life you’ve lived. Born in 1979, Robert Darch’s last book, VALE, was a response to a life he didn’t live after a decade of illness robbed him of his young adulthood. His latest book, The Island, is a response to the life he’s living in post Brexit Britain. ‘As a photographer, I’m not particularly judgemental. You can make a much more straightforward judgmental work about Brexit and who voted for it. The issue is so complex and layered and I can see both sides. For me it was more about how I feel about this? I felt really heavy about the decision and it’s not really a feeling I’ve associated with politics in the past,’ explains Robert. ‘From when I was very young, I initially had this idea about making a work that would’ve been called Sunday. I grew up in the Midlands and in the winter, Sundays always felt flat, grey, bleak days. For a long time I’ve had this melancholic, heavy atmosphere. As the elements came together, the Brexit vote was the inspiration,’ he adds.
After the referendum vote, with the precision of Sherlock Holmes, Robert slowly pieced the series together over three years. ‘I thought about who I might like to photograph and then as I worked my way through the project, I started finding the atmosphere.’ The young people he photographed appear as stand-ins for his emotional response. The first person he photographed was Abi, three images of her punctuate the book: stood on a cliff looking out to see, a full length portrait and a striking close up portrait, a small tear created by the wind nestles in her left eye as she perhaps weeps for her generation?
The decision to only photograph young people was intentional as in general, they voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union. ‘It felt like a really bad misstep and it’s going to affect them far more than me and my generation. We're going to have to suffer through the consequences but it’s really going to have an impact on them and it already is. It’s not going to be great for the foreseeable future. To me it feels like my generation was the last that had things to be positive about. Labour had just come into power, you had BritArt, BritPop, it felt like there were a lot of possibilities compared to what young people are looking at now, they won’t be able to buy a house, the cost of living, the world’s going to be burning in 30 years! It feels like a constant news cycle of anxiety and depression.’
Utilising the 5x4 crop mode through the viewfinder of his Nikon D850 with 35mm and 50mm prime lenses, it’s the first work Robert has put out in black and white. The combination links back to his first forays into photography and heightens the sense of place and atmosphere of the place he’s envisaged. Each of the 43 images are racked with tension and doused with gloom: A boat lurches in the mist, a child’s swing hangs still amongst overgrown shrubbery, there are abandoned homes and tunnels. The mist is a forbidding presence and the sea a constant reminder of dislocation. The book cover pictures a figure walking away towards a broken old pier. Since Robert completed The Island, it’s been prophetic, the atmosphere and feeling in The Island could equally be applied to COVID19, the war in Europe, fear of nuclear war, climate emergency, increasing overpopulation and a more insular society spawning a rise in right-wing politics.
There’s no captions or academic text in the book but some fiction based on Robert’s past that reads like a short story, hinting at themes of separation, small town mentality and the desire to be away from where you grew up. There are lyrics from the track Waiting Room by Fugazi, who sing angrily about someone wanting to leave town, to break free, escape. It's probably fair to say Robert is a little f****d off. Turning the pages, The Island poetically captures that wet Sunday feeling that we’ve all experienced, sitting in your bedroom listening to Morrissey, heartbroken after your partner’s just dumped you, wondering how you will survive.”
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Robin Titchener - 2023
“As with pretty much any photo book that catches my attention, the initial lure has to be the work itself. In the case of The Island it was a masterclass of mood, a pitch perfect journey into a cinematic storyboard that hints at the romance of a time passed and the broken hearts, hopes and dreams of those washed up or stranded on the shores of "now". That it was Darch's response, a visual invocation if you will, to the dashed hopes and dreams of Britain's youth in the fallout of Brexit, only really became apparent upon reading his notes (secreted within the folds of the cover). However, upon first inspection the lyrical power of The Island suggested all manner of narratives and the scope and feel of moods and styles employed, rather than a comment on post Brexit Britain, instead swept me through an atmospheric journey evoking many of British cinema’s golden memories, the muted monochrome describing some of the most beautiful, slightly forlorn characters and countryside to pass before any lens. From steam trains moving through Hitchcock’s landscape of The 39 Steps, through the atmospheric mists of Lean’s Great Expectations and of course on to the portraits.
Here the change is palpable, rather than the challenged rebellion that characterised the sixties era films of Ken Loach and Lindsay Anderson, these are their twenty first century "offspring" gazing into the camera with world weary faces, sapped of hope and energy, many of them old before their time. Irrespective of the Brexit situation this is a generation likely to inherit the results of inept leaders and corrupt dictators on a global scale. So whether it's atmospheric romance or new age kitchen sink drama, this is where we are and The Island sings its mournful song as beautifully as any jaded chanteuse. But are we looking out across the waters to a land of milk and honey, of golden sunsets and countries united in harmony, or a slightly wonky machine beleaguered with its own infighting, financial problems and individual senses of national pride. Islanders are islanders (the world over), guarded (instinctively), insular (occasionally), independent (always) and whilst generational changes and a shrinking world means that our youth has become accustomed to the opportunities easily afforded them beyond our shores, for the time being at least, all they can see are bridges are being brought down and obstacles thrown up. However, surely the darkness and gloom that has encompassed the island is a phase - a chapter. And as is the nature of chapters sooner or later they come to an end and new ones begin.
At the risk of sounding a little idealistic, the reality is that we all need each other and until such times as bruised egos heal and pride (on both sides of the divide, both geographically and politically) can be soothed, it seems likely that our respective leaders will continue to punish one another and in doing so, their countries and their people. There has always been a stoicism to the people of this island and whether native or integrated (either newly arrived or established over time) that spirit has been absorbed and adopted. As of this moment the mood may be heavy, but surely there must still be hope, desires and ambition because without these, a necessary light and part of our hard won identity will certainly be extinguished.
The serene melancholy of The Island reflects an atmosphere of today and the light and conditions utilised, amplify and synchronise, nod and sympathise. But with a different day and seen in a different light, the mood is sure to be brighter and spirits allowed to lift once again. One can only hope that Darch’s lens is ready to capture that new day as well. In the case of The Island it was a masterclass of mood, a pitch perfect journey into a cinematic storyboard that hints at the romance of a time passed and the broken hearts, hopes and dreams of those washed up or stranded on the shores of "now".”
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Robert Macfarlane - 2023
“The photo here by Robert Darch evokes the wild, open magnificence of the moor, and - those tiny figures at the image’s heart - something of the hundreds of thousands of people from 10 Tor participants to D-of-E expeditioners to everyday folk seeking everyday escape, consolation, perspective and nature connection, who’ve responsibly wild camped Dartmoor over the past century.”
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This Pleasant Land - Rosalind Jana - Hoxton Mini Press - 2022
“Illness is often understood as its own kind of landscape. Susan Sontag describes the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick as separate territories. Hilary Mantel wrote about the sick room as its own to terrain: the world reduced to the edges of the bed, and the ceiling stretching above. Robert Darch's Vale was created in response to a prolonged period of chronic illness following a minor stroke in his twenties. When the body is incapacitated, the imagination becomes a refuge. Darch found solace in fictive worlds, daydreaming about everything that lay outside the claustrophobic limits of his home. Later, after moving to Devon, he embarked on a project in the surrounding area that brought some of those narratives to life.
Vale tilts between the halcyon and the sinister, imagining Darch’s lost time and lost youth through a mixture of culture and landscapes. Young people stare uneasily at the camera, at odds with their surroundings. There are shadows in the trees and rotting carcasses on the ground. Despite the constructed nature of various shots, many of these images came about organically. One day, Darch discovered a swarm of bees on a chopped down log, on another, he came across an abandoned house overwhelmed by ivy. These deliberately eerie elements were fine-tuned by taking behind-the-scenes pictures on a horror film, but they also speak to something deeper about rural spaces. For every moment of blue-skied idyll, there is another where the atmosphere shifts and a sense of the unknown descends. There are mysteries that lurk down the lanes and in the depths of our mind, glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye. Blink, and you might just catch them.“
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Another Country - Gerry Badger - Thames & Hudson - 2022
‘Robert Darch’s bailiwick is Devonshire, as shown in his first book The Moor (2018). But his vision is as much imagined as perceived, and he frames much of his work around a fictional town, Durlescombe, in order to position it as art as much as documentary’
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Source - Colin Pantall - 2021
“Robert Darch also questions the idea of the romantic English landscape in his latest book, Vale. ‘At the age of 22, ‘reads the back-of-book introduction, ‘Darch suffered from a minor stroke, followed by a period of ill-health which would affect him, on and off, for the majority of his twenties. As a coping mechanism…. he retreated into a world of fictional narratives.’ It is these fictional narratives that are recreated in Vale: an attempt ‘…to relive and re-imagine a lost period in his life, journeys with friends both through physical spaces and through time.’
There is a sense of foreboding in Vale, single light bulbs hang from a tungsten tinged ceiling in a room covered with paper bought from a ration book, framed pictures of long deceased family members vying with crucifixes for viewers’ attention. That’s how the book ends, a flash of spook light gleaming in the oval mirror, Darch escaping this Devon Hill House by the skin of his West Country teeth.
The book starts with optimism, with the sun rising over a river winding through mist laden meadows. There are poppies, a girl stands in a clearing, the sun on her deadpan face, a boy stands chest deep in a leaden stream, a sign on another wall reading ‘Come unto Me and I will give you rest’. The invitation is there and waiting. It’s an eternal late summer in the book and there is that anxiety of good times about to end; a baby breastfeeds as its mother gazes questioningly into the camera, a man lies in mental pain in his partners lap and the house that comes from a different time appears again and again, its interiors ghostly reminders of the short-circuits that time can make. In Vale, time doesn’t flow or move forward, but folds over onto itself, shifting from one visual memory to the next, jumping between the visual archetypes that from the atlas of our minds. There are multiple nostalgias happening here, with a cinematic overlay that has a little bit of Nicolas Roeg or Stanley Kubrick about it, as well as the namechecked references of Japanese horror films and Stand by Me. “
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The British Journal of Photography - Isaac Huxtable - 2021
“Due to ongoing illness, Robert Darch spent a majority of his twenties at home, surrounded and isolated by rural landscapes. In his new photobook Vale, the photographer reflects upon this time.
Over the last year, illness has found a space in all of our lives. Through the Covid-19 pandemic, we have built new understandings and relationships with our bodies and surroundings. For some, this kind of life is not new at all. Illness can be thought of as a condition, a moment situated in time - something to get over, pass, and remit. For others, illness can be felt as space; a location that cannot be left, the place in which one lives, and the world they see around them. In his second year at university, Robert Darch had a seizure. “I later found out that it was a minor stroke,” he explains. “I then had a diagnosis of glandular fever, a couple of months later - I was unwell.”. Attending university in person became impossible, and Darch completed his degree from home. With the additional diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Darch lived independently for four years, but eventually, this too became impossible. “It was too much. My parents had retired to Devon, so I made the decision to move in with them,” he explains. Darch began to feel better over these two years, eventually moving to Exeter to work as a volunteer, and return to photography. ‘‘I went back to university, and started what had stopped almost 10 years before.”
Vale is the latest photobook by the artist, which he has self-published. Images of old trees, verdant valleys and hot summer hazes denote an archetypal British countryside and typify the narrative. Alongside this, disconcerting elements peek from behind; something can be felt amongst the trees. The beauty of nature faces a ghostlike, fractured, and melancholic stillness. There is more at play under the surface of this pastoral landscape.
The work draws from the lived experiences of ill-health. Darch found comfort in fictional worlds, domestic interiors, and the natural landscapes around him. Vale is a compilation of these multiple worlds, allowing the realities, dreams, fictions and memories to blend together in a space of escapism and meditation. Vale cannot be found on a map. It is not a topographical reality, but a semi-fictional one Darch has lived in for the last decade. “It’s hyperreal and dreamlike,” Darch says. “I daydreamed a lot as a kid, I still do as an adult, and definitely in those years when I was isolated, I was inside, I was in my mind all the time.”
The work is personal, confessional, and therapeutic. Darch utilises references from multiple sources, including childhood literature such as the work of Enid Blyton, as well as horror films by Dario Argento and Tobe Hooper. Portraits of friends and family sit uneasily, avoiding the viewer’s gaze and blurring into the dream. Working on Vale allowed Darch to reimagine his youth, rewrite the years and reflect a life both lived and stolen. In this way Darch is able to process his past, forming a new world out of the old.
“My work is an expression of myself,” Darch explains. In Vale, illness is not just a condition, but a place. It can be visited, discovered, lost, and found. Darch is at peace with the years spent inside, in full communication with the beauty and stillness of his country home. When we imagine illness and health as spaces, it allows for a middle ground, a limbo in between. This is where Vale is placed through the postcards sent to and from the world Darch found himself in.”
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The Photobook Journal - Gerhard Clausing - 2021
“The word vale can have a number of meanings. It can imply a farewell, a letting go of things that perhaps are unattainable or forever lost. Or, it can be a valley, a hidden place between hills or mountains that may not be so easy to get to or to find. I think Robert Darch’s title for this photobook most likely implies all of these shades of meaning, and more. It is a tribute to the searching that all youths go through, and some continue to pursue across a lifetime.
Darch had a setback early in his life, a mild stroke that set some boundaries on his physical activities and full participation in the customary life of someone in his 20s. This is a book that presents a look back at what might have been, but was perhaps not possible. Don’t we all at times review some moments from days gone by that might have presented opportunities that we did not follow up on, whether the barrier was physical, emotional, or both?
The images in this small but powerful book have a mysteriously strong effect on the viewer. We see country landscapes and locations with mostly solitary males and females, but the negative spaces are often larger than the figures depicted. The individuals are shown mostly by themselves, in solitary moments, and only occasionally with someone else. We do have the distinct feeling that the individuals are lonely and not particularly pleased with that situation.
There is a dreamlike, uncertain feeling that is pervasive; somewhat eerie landscapes are at times interrupted by ladders leading to nowhere, or bridges on the verge of disintegration. The powerful portraits are environmentally purposed and well sequenced. The characters have indecisive facial expressions, and we almost see them on the verge of taking the next step in their lives. This presentation seems to mirror the fictional world that was Darch’s retreat during that difficult period of his life, “characteristics which were at once benign and threatening,” as Dan Cox puts it in his insightful afterword.
We are impressed by the consistent atmosphere and mood this book projects – a challenging sequence that very effectively draws us into Darch’s mysteries. Perhaps we also get the idea that solitary moments can also be worthwhile in and of themselves. You want to call out to these youngsters to enjoy the moment, and look around a bit: the answer may be just around the corner, or in the next clearing – look ahead to what can come next. When all is said and done, life may not turn out to be such a vale of tears after all.”
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F-Stop Magazine - Cary Benbow - 2021
“Vale is the latest book by photographer Robert Darch. Darch creates narrative fictions which explore ideas and feelings based on his early adulthood. The sense of loss he experienced in his twenties is expressed in eerie or spooky scenes of the rural idyllic English countryside. These scenes sometimes include figures, and oftentimes we are shown images which hint at something that lies just below the surface. Something left unsaid, but perceived by the viewer nonetheless. I’d call the book a self portrait… as in his previous book The Moor, Darch depicts dark reflections of real world landscapes, melancholy, and invented memory vignettes to create compelling storytelling.
Most of the tension in Vale is apparent even without the knowledge of Darch’s backstory. The reader has the benefit of Dan Cox’s essay and his insight on the matter: “At the age of 22, Darch suffered from a minor stroke, followed by a period of ill-health which would affect him for the majority of his twenties. As a coping mechanism during convalescence, he retreated into a world of fictional narratives, of indoor spaces and eventually a physical move back to his familial home of Devon. Slowly, he began to reset his narratives, his place in the world, and the expectations of his youth. An unseen enemy threatening his own body and psyche was mitigated by escapism and wish-fulfilment.”
Darch presents the reader with 36 images in this book. We see landscapes and portraits. Dramatic low light of a morning or evening illuminates a young man swimming, or another young man standing in the woods with a camera slung around his neck (the photographer personified?), or a young woman gazing upward while crouched beneath a large tent on the mossy, soft, fern-covered wilderness. These exteriors are contrasted by interior scenes with light dramatically bouncing around from a window then out into the hallway, a family room or parlor with an unseen light source reflecting off a large mirror, and a bedroom with partially opened door to suggest we are invited to look inside. We see an empty bed with framed needle point hanging on the wall above the headboard. The emotionally charged setting and the saying, “Come unto Me… and I will give you REST”, is stitched beneath soft-colored flowers. Compare and contrast this scene with others which feature young men and women walking through a golden-lit field of grass, exploring the woods, or a woman breastfeeding a baby while she stares directly at the viewer. An entire panoply of people, places and times are laid bare. The setting is ‘the halcyon days of young adulthood’ and these people are beautiful.
Are these scenes of actual experiences, or lost experiences? Are these equivalents to imagined afternoons? Could these be shadows of times to come, or stories recounting a youth full of exploration and living life deliberately? Or are we viewing these scenes from behind the dark side of the mirror? I get the strong impression that Darch wishes to give us the sense that these seemingly idyllic views are not as they seem. The fact that I have more questions than answers is one of the reasons why the work resonates so strongly with me and draws me in further. I want to experience this, I want to lie in the fields and walk through the woods, yet something also scares me about it. Darch’s fictional ‘Vale’ could be called the Uncanny Valley… ironic in this case because the term is most often used in the field of aesthetics. Bear with me… the concept suggests that humanoid objects (insert Darch’s vignettes here) which imperfectly resemble actual human beings (real vignettes) provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. This is the stuff of nightmares.
Whether real, imagined, or wistful remembrance, Darch skillfully presents a story which Dan Cox perceptively describes as such, “In the liminal space between fiction, narrative and reality, the intentions and outcomes of Vale have become intractably intertwined. However, we must respect the fictional boundaries of this place as if they were reality, even as this world itself begins to fall apart. Indeed, we might conclude that in our current situation within 2020, a sense of a loss of time is what might be driving our own search for the promise of truth that nostalgia seems to offer. But even as we are in pursuit of that promise, we may need to discard the veracity apparently offered by photography, recognising and ultimately embracing Vale as the manifestation of a lost time, with all the weight that such a loss implies.”
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David Drake - 2021
“A fabulous self-published photobook of beautiful, evocative work. Strongly recommend you pick up a copy before it's out of print.”
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Paul Seawright OBE - 2021
“Sensitive portraits and beautiful understated landscapes with a masterful treatment of light. He conjures up a fictional, slightly off kilter, even ominous depiction of rural England. I highly recommend it.”
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The British Journal of Photography - Joe Lloyd - 2020
“On 23 June 2016, the UK’s electorate voted to leave the European Union. For Robert Darch, the morning after remains etched in the memory. “I woke up feeling this overwhelming sense of heaviness, and the sadness that we’d lost something,” he recounts. “It felt like a tipping point into the surreality that was to follow.” The Exeter-based photographer is no stranger to the hinterlands between fact and fiction. The Moor, published as a book
in 2018, transformed the swampy mires and stark tors of Dartmoor into a dystopian vision of the near future. Darch’s ongoing project, Durlescombe, meanwhile, assembles new and unearthed photography, illustrations and images from his own family history to trace a fictitious Devon village through the seasons.
These works create imagined narratives from real life. But how can photography negotiate a world where reality has become odder than fiction? Darch’s latest series, The Island, provides an answer. Landscapes and portraits together capture a country racked with tension. They are shot in black-and-white, and suffused with an almost palpable melancholy. “When I tried monochrome before, it felt like I was trying to force it,” recalls Darch, “but here it made sense symbolically and aesthetically.” The photographs that comprise The Island were largely taken around the West Country and Darch’s hometown in Birmingham’s commuter belt. “It’s important for me to make work where I live,” he says. “You have a real sense of the landscape, the geography, the people.” Several images hark back to English landscape painters, such as John Constable or John Northcote Nash, though Darch’s England is wintry and solemn rather than resplendent in sun. There are mist-shrouded coves, murky hills and forlorn trees. The sea, emblematic of Britain’s decision to detach itself from its neighbours, is a persistent and forbidding presence.
Darch invited friends and acquaintances on his walks through countryside and coastline, who then became his subjects. “There’s an intimacy, and in a way it becomes a collaboration between me and the person as I’m taking a picture,” he says. Some of these figures are rooted in their environment: one man stands on a dramatic cliff, looking out across the foggy sea, while a woman crouches in an overgrown meadow before an austere country house. Others are wistful portraits, where subjects have their anxieties etched on their faces. All are young adults, the section of society most opposed to Brexit. “When you’re younger, feelings and emotions are heightened, more pronounced. So I wanted to draw on that,” says Darch.
Even his most oblique shots thrum with uncertainty. A shovel sits atop a slick of sticky, unctuous liquid, which could as easily be blood as paint. An eerie box lays on a wooden floor, splattered by droppings. “It’s a barn owl box,” he explains, “but it feels very ambiguous. I enjoy it when work makes you question; makes you wonder what it shows.” As the UK prepares to leap into an unknown future, these ambiguities feel entirely apposite.”
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Float Magazine - Tim Hodge - 2020
“The Moor is a dark dream, a portent of doom. A message in a bottle from the future cast back in time, full of warnings. Something between the construction and pacing of La Jetée and the aesthetics of Mad Max. Yet, this dream and vision have an inevitability to them. Even with this premonition, the cataclysm seems impossible to escape.
The psychological power of the color scheme of The Moor can not be understated. It begins on the cover, delicate white lines like a cool breeze across a cliff face under a stark sun. The shape of the book and color of the cover calls to mind government publications from my childhood. This quasi-authoritative structure references mass production but holds secrets within its pages. The combination of delicate imagery and almost brutalist physicality reminds me of the quiet moments in the original Mad Max, beautiful with palpable tension, a clash of disparate feelings.
From the start, The Moor immediately grips the viewer with a powerful image of isolation. A solitary person on the titular moor, awash in fog, winter (natural or manmade) has seemingly stripped this field of the life it guarded. Throughout the book there’s never more than a single person in an image. The rich tones drip with mood, hauntingly lonely yet so inviting.
I don’t want to give too much away but one of the most delightful things about his book is the moments of repetition, its cinematic pacing. The repeat of its start forms keeps drawing me in. The images are like the chorus in a song, each page a poem’s stanza. More than a collection of pictures it achieves the goal of every photo book, telling a story. There is no body text in the book itself, allowing the story to take on a more personal narration than if it had been guided by copy.
Every time I look through this book I experience an inescapable desire to know what’s on the outer bounds of the frame, to explore this world. I kept wondering how one writes about the inevitability of doom? From the visual statement I hold in my hands, I believe Robert Darch might say “don’t write, make images.”
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Martin Parr CBE - 2019
“The Moor is the first book of the emerging photographer Robert Darch. The MP Foundation had the privilege to launch this book. We very much enjoy encouraging and promoting new talent and look forward to many more publications.”
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Tracy Marshall - 2019
“Robert Darch's pictures evoke the still quiet peace of The Moor in a way the viewer can almost touch, smell and feel the atmosphere. As with all his work the photographs create a sense of the here and now coupled with a distinct nostalgia for the past - Thomas Hardy's Wessex emanating from within each image. Darch is a quiet unassuming photographer whose work has immense depth and intensity, his passion for the moor is clearly visible in each of his pictures in a way few capture consistently and continually.”
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Simon Roberts - 2019
“Robert has produced a welcome addition to the canon of British photobooks. His first publication, The Moor, is a darkly poetic study of the unique landscape of Dartmoor which plays with fiction and reality. A must-have!”
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F-Stop Magazine, Cary Benbow - 2019
“A quote from Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian novel, The Road, sets the stage for The Moor. Robert Darch’s photo book depicts a fictionalized dystopian future situated on the bleak moorland landscapes of Dartmoor, England. Darch explains that the project draws on childhood memories, and influences from contemporary culture to create a narrative that references local and universal mythology; all of which gives context but suggests something altogether more unknown. Darch further explains that the realization of this dystopian future is specifically in response to a perceived uncertainty of life in the modern world and a growing disengagement with humanitarian ideals. The Moor portrays an unsettling world that shifts between large open vistas, dark forests, makeshift dwellings, uncanny visions and isolated figures.
‘He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.’ (Cormac McCarthy, The Road, 2006)
I came across the accompanying text on Darch’s website after having already paced through the book, which caused me to reconsider the underlying psychological pull of The Moor. The feel of an on-going narrative is reinforced by reappearing characters, often appearing on edge, in peril or distressed. The inherent wildness of the landscape heightens this fragile sense of existence, with the suggestion of an unseen presence adding to the isolation and tension. Darch uses constructed documentation to create dramatic narratives. Shifting between quasi-documentary and staged photography, The Moor transcends into narrative fiction, even if all the people and places are based on a real place.
The book left me with an eerie feeling; I felt the drawing power of inaudible whispers possibly luring the characters into the wilderness of the Moor, truths are tested, madness and hallucinations ensue, and a bit of ghost story is thrown in for good measure. Whether real or imagined, ultimately Darch created a palpable vision: The Moor depicts dark reflections of real world landscapes, mythology, and memories to create compelling storytelling.”
The Moor is published by Another Place Press and was launched at the Martin Parr Foundation in December 2018.
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Photobookstore Magazine, Sebastian Bustamante-Brauning - 2019
“Robert Darch’s The Moor photobook continues the successful publishing streak by Another Place Press, an independent publisher specialising in landscape photography. This volume follows on from Dan Wood’s excellent Gap in the Hedge, images of the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. The Moor takes us on an invented journey around Dartmoor, Devon. Darch’s inspiration, Cormac McCarthy’s dystopian literature, comes across in the place and space created in this photobook. McCarthy’s literature has done much to shape our collective imagination of the American landscape whether it is though his seminal Border Trilogy on the Mexico/US border or through The Road (2006), which is the inspiration for Darch‘s photobook.
The Moor does not contain any text and its narrative is signposted by the images contained within. The establishing photograph of a lone figure lost in the wilderness introduces readers to the mise-en-scène of the book. It is uncertain which direction our protagonist is going to take, a fog engulfs the land up ahead. What follows is a series of empty landscapes and photographs of survivors following an extinction event. One of this book’s graces is that despite its Hollywood inspiration, the scenery still maintains its identity as located in the British landscape. Some of Darch’s most successful images depict the spectral traces on earth as best exemplified by the image of a petroglyph covered in moss and surrounded by snow, a trace and evidence of humans’ interactions with the pre-historical landscape. In another image, an untouched bar of soap withstands the elements in the ruins of a building, its branding just about legible.
The popularity of dystopian narratives shows no sign of abating and it is interesting to see how Darch has taken influence from this popular genre. The approach lends itself well to being read through a photobook where the sequencing and layouts do a good job of creating space and atmosphere. Unlike Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which surprisingly complies with the Hollywood classic narrative to re-establish order out of disorder, my reading of Darch’s The Moor is somewhat more open ended. It lets the reader decide for themselves whether hope prevails and ultimately humanity is saved from its eventual extinction or whether survival in The Moor is futile.”
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Ignant, Rosie Flanagan - 2019
“Darch takes the eerie fog-cloaked landscape inhabited by McCarthy’s characters and recasts it through his lens. “The Moor depicts a fictionalised dystopian future situated on the bleak moorland landscapes of Dartmoor”, he explains. “Drawing on childhood memories of Dartmoor alongside influences from contemporary culture, the narrative references local and universal mythology to give context, but suggests something altogether more unknown.” The series is dark, proposing a future dystopia through images of the present. Darch’s lens shifts from vertiginous, dark forest, to open grass plains, makeshift dwellings and figures illuminated and distorted by light. The ferocity of nature is present too, its wildness unbound as Darch frames the environment and society on the point of collapse. “Shifting between pseudo-documentary and constructed photography”, Darch explains, “The Moor blurs that liminal space between fiction and reality.”
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Gabriela Cendoya, Bergareche Collection - 2019
“The Moor takes place in Dartmoor, or is it only in our dreams? The landscape looks real as we wander in the lone and bare land or venture in the woods, but there is something strange happening here. The land attracts us like in a heavy sleep, an eerie and mysterious one. It is a powerful attraction one has to submit to, leaving all resistance. Is it a frightening vision of the future? Has there been a war and are these the only living people? Robert Darch leaves us with more questions than answers, intrigued and charmed by the beautiful and natural light, by the strange dream, the fragile and delicate figures in the landscape. One may think of the disquieting and oppressive space of Geert Goiris’ The Prophet, the uncertainty of a dystopian future, the end of our known world. But here the threat and mystery arises from the land and the light itself, beautifully rendered by Robert Darch in the nice edition of Another Place Press. Can we escape from the secret power of the Moor? And do we really want to?”
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Colin Pantall - 2019
“Filled with an other worldly emotion” - The Moor
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Wallpaper Magazine, Charlotte Jansen - 2019
“A dystopian vision of Dartmoor unfolds in Robert Darch’s haunting photographs. The Moor, a sci-fi visual narrative that shows the landscape as a dystopia in the near future. Dark, tense and perilous, Dartmoor is turned into a dramatic stage setting, primal and symbolic. As an adult, Darch found himself living in the area, moving closer and closer to the moor, drawn there as if by some uncanny force.”
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Murray Ballard - 2019
“A beautifully photographed apocalyptic vision that feels alarmingly prescient in these dark times.” - The Moor
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Port Magazine, Thomas Bolger - 2019
“Robert Darch’s fictionalised photographic narrative reflects an eerily recognisable dystopia. Insular populist governments, unchecked climate change and a general abandonment of humanitarian ideals is leaving many with the feeling that they currently live within a dystopian world. These are some of the dark forces implicitly expressed in Robert Darch’s fictionalised future and pseudo-documentary series, The Moor, a photographic narrative that blends childhood memories of Dartmoor with recurring characters surviving in a bleak, unforgiving wilderness.
Drawing on the many myths of the moorland landscape and contemporary classics such as The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Darch moves from vistas to ramshackle dwellings with uncanny ease, while an undercurrent of dread and fragility scores the scenes of sublime natural beauty. The ambiguity of the pictures only adds to their eeriness, as we attempt to read the meaning behind the isolated figures.”
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It’s Nice That, Ruby Boddington - 2018
“The notion of a dystopian society has long provided inspiration for writers, filmmakers and artists. There was of course, George Orwell’s media and information controlled-world in 1984, Anthony Burgess’ satirical and dark exploration of ultra-violent youth culture in A Clockwork Orange, and Masamune Shirow’s mind hacking cyborg-filled Japan in A Ghost in the Shell. The world conjured up in photographer Robert Darch’s upcoming book, The Moor, however, feels much closer to home – and far more imminent.
Produced between 2013 and 2015 while Robert was studying for his master’s degree, The Moor depicts a fictionalised future situated on the bleak moorland of Dartmoor. Channelling Robert’s emotional response to the landscape, it’s a series imbued with feelings of isolation and melancholy. In one image, a lonely figure appears in the centre of a vast space, almost camouflaged by the weather beaten grass, as the landscape fades into nothing but fog in front of them. In another, an apparently abandoned house emerges from the woodland. The combination of abandoned, open spaces and reoccurring unnamed characters builds a narrative throughout the book, although one that is open to interpretation.
What makes The Moor so compelling, however, is actually its alignment with reality. It portrays an unease with the modern world, expressing Robert’s concerns in relation to the environment and society. “It feels especially prescient now with the country split over leaving Europe and years of Tory cuts and uncontrolled capitalism which have created insecure and unfulfilling work environments,” he outlines, “Alongside global warming and the continued destruction of the natural environment, it doesn’t feel like we are far off from a dystopian future, in fact, it wouldn’t be too hard to argue for many they are already living in one.”
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The Martin Parr Foundation - 2018
“Two rising stars in British photography, Dan Wood and Robert Darch, discuss recently published works. Robert Darch will discuss the importance of autobiography, touching on the relationship between his photographic practice, geography in the South West of England and himself as a photographer. Using found, constructed and documentary images within his practice, Darch will describe how he combines these elements to create a sense of place, referencing both his recent book The Moor and his ongoing project Durlescombe.”
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It's Nice That, Ruby Boddington - 2018
“In 2008, Birmingham-born photographer Robert Darch moved to Exeter, Devon in the south west of England. In that decade, the area would come to shape the geographical context of Robert’s work, of which the series Durlescombe is a large part. An ongoing project, Durlescombe tells the story of a fictional, yet altogether typical Devonshire village, through documentary photography, Robert’s own family photos and found illustrations.
Already aware that his family name of Darch had links to Devon, Robert found himself in a small town in the middle of the county in the Spring of 2016. “I thought it might be fun to see if I could find any Darch’s in the graveyard,” he recalls, “almost instantly, and to my surprise, I found a large gravestone with my name on it, Robert Darch.”
This chance discovery prompted a project which sees Robert exploring his own attachment to a region where generations of his family have lived and worked for almost one thousand years. Although not a real place, the village of Durlescombe becomes a holding ground for this attachment; an embodiment of Robert’s identity and nostalgia.
The series is full of chance encounters, from finding the original gravestone to meeting actual family members and abandoned buildings previously owned by relatives. Although ultimately fictitious, these interactions are what breathe so much nostalgia into the images. This nostalgia is also captured within the tone of the images, however. Full of misty scenes and lofty barns, there is a drama to the series which is only furthered by the inclusion of archival illustrations and photographs.
When shooting the series, Robert spent time observing the local people and documenting from afar but also constructed certain shots. “I explained that they are more like characters inhabiting this place from my imagination rather than being an accurate portrayal of them,” he explains. Despite this, there is an honesty to the series as a result of the time Robert spent getting to know the community, allowing them to have a say in the narrative that ensued.”
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David Chandler, Rural Deep, Plymouth University - 2017
“Rural Deep will feature presentations by two photographic artists whose recent work is concerned with the evolving relationships between people and rural environments in very distinctive, localised contexts in Europe. Combining and juxtaposing different photographic registers in their work, both artists disrupt conventional documentary models to construct new ways of seeing and imagining rural experience. Their rural scenes shift between dark mystery and sunlit pastoral, between the sublime and the banal. Tradition and modernity are often awkwardly aligned, and quotidian reality is undercut by elements of fictional narrative, ambiguity and the absurd. In their different ways, Anne Golaz and Robert Darch present multi-textural visions of rural life, in which age-old rhythms and rituals have taken on new and often surprising meanings and associations.”
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Source Graduate, Cliff Lauson, Hayward Gallery - 2016
“Darch's documentary-style images, both archival and contemporary, of the fictional town of Durlescombe harken back to some of the long-standing questions about the veracity of photography. Ranging from portraits to the smallest details of rural life, the series works together to paint a convincing picture of this non-exsistent village. But beyond this conceptual framework, his photographs are also powerful atmospheric constructions. There's a great tension between stillness and motion in many of his images, used succesfully along with bold composition strategies.
It is always a great pleasure to be involved with graduate work, and as a visual arts curator, I am generally interested in images that work across both conceptual and aesthetic lines. This can be a tricky balance to strike, but it is one that a number of photographers in this year's submissions have accomplished with a high degree of originality and impact. In some works, I could see the influence of historical photographers resonating, but filtered through very contemporary topics and themes. Transition, thresholds, and change seem to be the prevalent topics of the more representational images, while others depict the quieter moments and traces of places that appear all the more charged for their abandon. I had a strong gut reaction to all of the works that I selected - they stirred something inside of me and drew me into the photographer's story, as all good artwork should.”
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David Chandler, Plymouth University - 2016
“Both Sian (Davey) and Robert have excelled during their time at Plymouth, producing photographic work that is both highly distinctive in its relationship to the South West and completely international in its ambition and standard. Their success is indicative of an exciting momentum in the teaching of photography at the University, which is set to gather pace in the future.”
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Juxtapoz Magazine, Elicia Epstein - 2016
“In each of his three photo series, Vale, The Moor, and The White Wale, British photographer Robert Darch shows masterful command of light and a propensity for precise composition.
Featured in the gallery are images from The Moor, a sequence of sixty-one color and black and white photographs that create a magnificent, uneasy world. Vast, strange and quiet landscapes intersperse with portraits, with only one subject featured at a time. Across the series, there is a consistent specificity of subject. Everything is under a microscope, but nothing lacks for space. What’s more vague, rather, is the constructed presence of the image-maker. Darch uses subtle shifts in camera position and zooming in through consecutive images that create the sense of a curious, omnipresent but invisible eye.”
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Lensculture on Vale - 2016
“Romantic landscapes set in the southwest of England-home of Arthurian legends-laced with contemporary unease. Fiction, document, feeling and place are all rolled together in this nuanced set of images.”