Buy PRIVATE 46 [J]ohn Davies’s work offers a synthesis of traditionally opposed trends of a way of representing landscapes in photography. Indeed, when he looks at nature or cities, often the suburbs, he is either contemplative or analytical, and sometimes both.
Made in Japan, this series of color, square photographs of Fuji City doesn’t break with the earlier series, in black and white, dedicated mainly to British and French landscapes: the passing of human activities contrast with the durability of nature. Nevertheless, in the background, the silhouette of Mount Fuji occupies in an obsessive way the center of the photography.
The artist, magnetized by this mountain as a cultural monument, which shies away from the glance, seems to recognize the impossibility to produce new images of it.