Jill Cole

Jill Cole makes work to do with The National Forest. She started her work last March and it is now near completion in January. Her aim is to reflect a moment in time by looking at 'what the forest is about'; the focus is the landscape. She wanted to do this work to add to her portfolio. Her research involved her looking at the history of The National Forest, she began with exploring and looking at a variety of areas within The National Forest and noticed that it was near large cities; she questioned how much the area is about the trees. When she visited the location she thought the following words - change, diversity, time, layers, conflict, incomplete, embryonic, multiplicity, catalyst - these were her early thoughts. She said, "in a few years time The National Forest will look very different." She went through a number of different maps - "like a place it hides as much as it reveals" - Liz Wells talking about maps. Her main focus/area of interest was still looking at the trees and land usage. "We are having to intervene to turn thing back into their natural state" - talking about replanting trees. She saw that some areas had to be taken down and destroyed to rebuild and replace the landscape. She made a video to experiment with sound and video. 

In the early stages she first documented the site and instead of using her usual film camera she used a canon mark 2. Secondly she paired up her images to experiment with them and created another video. Then, thirdly, she looked at the idea of photographing the fruits of the forest. She then went on to layer her final images, she layered two images together then she believes went well with each other.

The three above images are from - in my opinion - some of her best work. They are from a series of her images called 'birds'. The colours are all very similar (greens, yellows, browns) all colours that we associate with natural and trees and stuff. The images are all very clear and in focus. They were created over 18 months from 2007 - 2008 on British military land. They were part of a national bird ringing programme where the birds are caught during flight in a fine net supported by two poles. It was created from a larger series of work based on military training land.