Joe Cornish

Landscape photographer Joe Cornish lives on the western edge of the North York Moors, close to the local landmark of Roseberry Topping.

For Joe, this is no pristine wilderness, or manicured park, but rather a working upland covered by great carpets of heather that can be a forbidding, bristling black, or an opulent purple haze, depending on the conditions and time of year.

Joe regards landscape photography as the ‘Art of Acute Observation’. It is the process of organising shape, line, form, light, energy and space within the camera's viewfinder, and pressing the shutter at the moment that best distills the ideas that are potential in the image.

Joe says: 

The years of walking, of standing in the teeth of a gale, or clambering through snowdrifts, of marvelling at spring wildflowers in the gritty, peaty soils, of watching the sun sinking over the blanket of August heather, or of climbing up through mist onto high ridges on an autumn morning … these years have helped me understand the moods and beauty of the moors.

The camera has helped me understand this is a truly living landscape of variety, character, history, humanity … a place that has retained its traditions and remains untainted by industrialised tourism. And the art in photography has helped me to cultivate the love which I feel for the North York Moors.

Joe Cornish

Landscape photgrapher

Exhibited in gallery: 2012, 2017

www.joecornishgallery.co.uk