Portfolio: Guy Sargent

'What Lies Beneath'

Up until three years ago, London-born 44-year-old landscape photographer Sargent was a full-time carpenter. But after buying a camera and securing six weeks off work to tour around Ireland taking photographs, he never returned to carpentry. His work has focused on using a slow, studied approach towards landscapes and architecture using an old-fashioned, large-format camera.

Excerpts from Sargent's "What Lies Beneath" series are showcased here. "My holidays have always been to coastal areas, so the series started with coastal photographs," he explains. "Initially it was just an emotional response to what I was seeing, but after a while I realised there's quite a deep meaning, a theme to it all; time passes, but with landscapes, nothing really changes except the man-made monuments we put on them.

"With the picture above, 'West Pier, Brighton' (2006), it's all about time eroding a man-made piece; nature will always reclaim. It was shot early in the morning with a very long exposure, so there's almost no definition to it."

www.photography-now.net/guy_sargent