Artist Interview: Tina Westcott speaks of how the Mendip Hills inspired her to gain Associateship with the Royal Photographic Society

Photographer Tina Westcott spoke with us about her recent project called ‘Nature’s Reclamation of Disused Quarries’, which gained her an Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society in the Landscape genre. Her panel of images were printed on Somerset Photo. Tina is local to St Cuthberts Mill and photographed many of the images on the Mendip Hills, which has been and still is, a rich source of quarrying. The Mendips play an intrinsic role to St Cuthberts Mill, with the water that breathes life into our papers.

The Mendip Hills have a long history of quarrying its basalt and limestone providing an excellent source of stone for the building, road building, and pharmaceutical industries.  The hills also create the pure water of the River Axe, by filtering the water as it slowly trickles through the limestone, creating a maze of amazing caves and tunnels and as it emerges at Wookey Hole it is used, as it has been for three centuries, to create the papers made at St Cuthberts Mill.
 
Tina Westcott was inspired by how nature has been reclaiming the local disused quarries bringing back a rich variety of flora to once heavy industrial areas and strove to capture the changing landscape with her camera.

What do you love about photography?

First and foremost I love geography and exploring landscape, eager to see what is around the next corner.  We are a mountaineering family and photography became a natural extension of our walks, climbs and treks both at home and abroad.  As photography became more and more of a passion I preferred to explore with my camera alone, to be totally focussed and happy looking for colour, pattern and detail rather than the grand vista.

You’ve captured how nature slides back into the once scarred areas of quarrying, what first inspired you to focus on this, often overlooked, part of the Mendip landscape?

It was a visit to the disused slate quarries of North Wales one late autumn afternoon when the light was low and golden on the rock and the autumn leaves of the naturalising trees and shrubs.  This beauty prompted the idea to photograph the disused quarries of Mendip on my doorstep.  This became an ideal project for the last two years, confined as we were during lockdown to walking in our own locality, it also has the advantage that I can easily revisit locations to find the ideal light and season to photograph.

Your images show nature reclaiming the landscape, from small plants to large trees, how do you find these glorious locations?

As a lover of maps, I first highlighted all the disused Quarries identified on the East and West Mendip Ordnance Survey Maps and there are at least 42 of them and I live just half a mile away from one near my home!  They range from small roadside diggings to large acreages. Then an exciting treasure hunt began.  Although some have public footpaths the majority of disused quarries are privately owned and to obtain permission to explore them I visited Westbury Quarry on a Mendip Rocks weekend and the Earth Science Centre at Stoke St Michael.  Dr Gill Odolphie at the Earth Science Centre was incredibly helpful and guided me to those quarries she knew to be particularly beautiful. 

What was your goal with this set of photographs, what did you want them to say to the viewer?

As the project grew it became an ideal subject for my Associateship panel.  This requires a set of 15 images presented in a tonally and structurally cohesive manner and a brief 150 word Statement of Intent.  Traditional landscape subjects have been grand vistas of well-known beauty spots shot in beautiful light.  However, many have now become overvisited and overphotographed.  I wanted to tell the story of Mendip in a more intimate and even abstract way.

What equipment do you rely on in the field to take your photographs?

I am not a technical photographer and, although I own a tripod, I rarely use it as my Olympus OM1 mk iii camera has excellent in camera stability enabling me to get sharp images handheld.  I rarely plan my visits preferring the spontaneity of responding to what I see in the moment, relying on my eye for geography, composition and awareness of light.  Occasionally using a wide-angle lens to take images which set the context, I prefer a zoom lens to capture structure and detail and to tell the story of the land in a more intimate manner.

To gain your Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society you had to show an understanding of the geography of the area, how did you go about achieving this?

An Associateship panel in the Landscape genre must demonstrate not only an understanding of geography but also a personal connection and style and tell a meaningful story.   I have a BSc in Geography which included a study of Botany and Ecology and growing up in Bristol I visited the Mendips on field trips and learned about limestone geomorphology, swallets and caves at school.  I have also done a bit of caving in the past.   Folk may not know that besides limestone we have an old volcano on the Mendips which provides the hard basalt for road building!  Quarries mostly become disused when they reach a point where difficult geology makes quarrying unsafe and unviable.  It doesn’t take nature long to recolonise the quarry levels.  Birds and the wind bring in the seeds and the resultant trees and shrubs cling to and emphasise the rock structures and old quarry levels beautifully and many old quarries have now become valuable nature reserves.

You were once lucky enough to visit St Cuthberts Mill a couple of years ago, when we were offering a limited number of ‘Golden Tickets’ during Somerset Art Weeks, did the industrial heritage of St Cuthberts Mill inspire you?

I was indeed lucky to tour St Cuthbert’s Mill and to see the age-old paper-making process from start to finish.  The care with which the original paper presses were maintained and operated, to see the rows of watermarking moulds and trying my hand at deckle edging the finished paper were the highlights and I took a few pictures!  St Cuthbert’s is one of only a handful of paper mills remaining making paper in Europe and I am delighted that they also make quality 100% cotton photographic paper so it was a natural choice for my images. 

You printed your images when you made the submission to the RPS, what qualities do you look for in inkjet paper?

I print my own images and initially chose St Cuthberts because of its connection to Mendip. As a relative newcomer to matte paper, often using lustre and baryta paper in the past, I am delighted with the sharpness and detail, and colour rendition that Somerset Photo Satin Bright White gives to my images. The RPS Print Assessor and my photography friends have all commented on the quality of the prints remarking on the almost 3D effect making the image almost jump out of the paper and lending texture and detail to the rock.

 

Credits

To see more of Tina’s work www.flickr.com/people/tinawestcott/

Email tinawestcottphotography@outlook.com

Royal Photographic Society www.rps.org

Somerset Earth Science Centre www.earthsciencecentre.org.uk  

To learn more about the water at St Cuthberts Mill and the Mendip Hills www.stcuthbertsmill.com/riveraxe