On Friday 11th September 2020 the new season commenced with a talk given by Emily Hancock FIPP FRPS and National Photographic Society Fellowship Photographer of the Year.
Emily is regarded as one of the worlds best equine and fine art photographers and commenced her talk by means of The Zoom Video Conferencing Application. As a result of the Covid lockdown and being unable for the foreseeable future to meet at their premises the club has employed this app to good effect to run their events and some competitions during this Summer.
Emily who lives in the New Forest was to outline the development of her art over many years which started with doing horse portrait photography . Being from a horse background this was an obvious start to her career and she soon gained many commissions for her work which was combine with teaching equine photography.
Emily's story is one of experiment ,of looking for something different, something new, and new directions. She has a restless creative spirit that drives her to explore new avenues for her work and at the same time run a successful business .
A visit to Iceland to photograph the bringing of the Icelandic horses down from the mountains to their Winter location was to lead on her return to the preparation of a Fellowship panel. This annual event in Iceland is for the local people a time to celebrate in song, dance and drinking. Then a visit to the Camargue resulted in the development of her art with a more expressionist approach intended to revel the essence of the horse in movement as opposed to the recording of detail of these wonderful creatures. In this body of work you can almost hear the animals snort and the thunder of hooves.
In more recent times and following much experiment she has developed her style with mixed media using encaustic wax to create a more impressionist or abstract expressionist image with the intention of engendering an emotional response from the viewer.
This has now morphed into what Emily describes as a flower period in which dried flowers are pressed onto a photograph in a manner to retain its form even to the extent where the original photographic image is completely removed leaving only the horse depicted with flower elements. Not withstanding this work has at its basis an image captured in a camera.
Emily concluded by saying that her heart and soul is still with photography which is the medium she loves and cherishes.
BNDCC thank Emily for sharing her work and passion and wish this expressive artist all future fortune. If you would like to see more of Emily's work visit her web site or follow her on Instagram @emilyhancock_art .
Next week club member Hugh Rooney will present a talk. Also submit entries for Round 1 of this year's club competition.
Edward Mc Cavana