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Green Pebble Magazine
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Articles> Justin Partyka
Justin Partyka’s exhibition, ‘The East Anglians’, is showing at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, until 13 December, 2009. Opening times are Tuesday to Sunday 10am-5pm, Wednesday 10am-8pm. Closed on Mondays, including bank holiday Mondays.
Eight
years ago Justin Partyka began to chronicle East Anglia’s hidden agrarian
world with a camera and – unusually – no flash. Some 14,000
photos later, he has distilled his impressions of that harsh, and yet much-loved,
lifestyle into just 57 large, moving, images collectively known as The East
Anglians.
Wander along the tilled earth of East Anglia’s remotest farmland and,
if you’re very astute, you may spot the silhouette of a man patiently
standing, often in the mud; watching, waiting and every now and then, when
the light is right, raising his Leica camera to take a photograph.
Around him, farmers continue their business, largely ignoring him as they
plough, sow and harvest in ways that have been handed down through the generations.
At day’s end the Norfolk photographer, Justin Partyka, may get invited
into a farmer’s home for a cup of tea or a bite to eat. There the
conversation will be unhurried and comfortable. Justin has spent the past
eight years forging a relationship with a handful of East Anglia’s
farmers and he has all the time in the world for them.
The farms Justin aims to capture with his photography are not the massive,
industrialized businesses that sprawl across thousands of acres and produce
much of the crops the nation takes for granted. His focus is on what he
describes as the ‘largely forgotten or hidden agrarian world’
of East Anglia; small farms of less than 140 acres typically tended by one
or two men.
‘It’s a world that most people have either forgotten or ignored,’
says Justin as he prepares for his exhibition, The East Anglians, at the
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, Norfolk. ‘You drive around
East Anglia and if you see anything, it’s these massive fields, and
perhaps you end up stuck behind a big modern tractor in your car, but what
you don’t know is that there’s also a world out there where
there’s a little tractor and a farmer trying to make a living out
of a 5-acre farm. These people, who I sometimes describe as being on the
margins, come from a culture where working the land is all they know and
their methods are very traditional.’
It is a world, he writes in his exhibition catalogue, where ‘everything
is engrained in history. Buildings are often cobbled together from a ramshackle
mix of wood, tin and stone. And the agricultural machinery is a patchwork
of rust, mud and oil stained, in which the past is embedded.’
It is also a world where there are few women. Or young. ...
This is only a small part of the article.
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Justin
has exhibited at Tate Britain, the Jerwood Space, and the Norfolk Rural
Life Museum, amongst other venues. Prints of his photographs are for sale.
Visit Justin Partyka.
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