Harry Cory Wright

Harry Cory Wright

Harry Cory Wright explores our fundamental attraction to place, and the very physical process of being in landscape. The vivid and immaculate nature of these large format photographs convey a real sense of 'being there'.

Sensation of Landscape (2021) is a series of works celebrating Cory Wright’s work over the last twenty five years and is accompanied by a new publication of the same title which includes an essay by Rachel Campbell-Johnston, the art critic for The Times.

In Six Hour Place (2017) Cory Wright’s photographs are primarily taken in the tidal landscape of Norfolk that are so familiar to him. These are strange places; sometimes dark and foreboding, then, suddenly serene beyond imagination. It is these moments of other worldliness that Cory Wright seeks out. He has often described the experience of being in a salt marsh as being at the centre of a vast vortex of time and place. Six Hour Place refers to the average amount of time the tidal waters are exposed and covered with each tide.

In Anglia (2015) he explores the eastern lowlands of the British Isles, an area which holds deep traces of the old as well as the new, the ancient and future and the world that lies in between. He infuses historical sites with prospect, with visions of what may come. A land made from centuries of human endeavour, each place transcends, becoming something intriguing, modern and full of potential.

He often spends several days in each location, becoming engrossed in the natural world around him, familiarising himself with the light, atmosphere, and selecting the perfect vantage point. He draws on Eugène Atget’s matter of fact approach with keen attention to the ambiance of a place and the unique spirit of the location. In a digital age where photographic imagery is widely disseminated and easily captured, he applies a methodical approach using his large and cumbersome view camera. The slow process, restriction of one exposure per scene and meticulous hand printing charge the final work with a sense of hard fought serenity and calm.

In his 2006 series Journey Through the British Isles he travelled extensively across Britain documenting and celebrating the splendour of the countryside and in his 2011 Place in Mind series he used his personal experiences of discovering places to investigate collective views of the landscape. His works are a visual expression of a desire to seek out what humanises landscape, what energises it with a sense of the prospect, and ultimately separates it from wilderness.

Harry Cory Wright was born in 1963 and lives and works in Norfolk. His work was included in Landmark: The Fields of Photography at Somerset House, London (2013) curated by William A. Ewing and also featured work by Darren Almond, Elger Esser, Hirsohi Sugimoto and Thomas Struth amongst others. Solo exhibitions include Six Hour Place, Creake Abbey (2017), Anglia, Eleven (2015), Hey Charlie, Eleven (2013) and Place in Mind, Eleven (2011).