Leading North-East photographer Joe Cornish talks to Ruth Addicott about his new exhibition and why the Dales proved his biggest challenge yet

HIS pictures may give the impression of time standing still, but in real time, landscape photographer Joe Cornish rarely has a second to spare.

Fresh from the Antarctic, followed by a brief trip to Scotland, he has barely had time to unpack before he has to fold up his tripod again and board a plane to Iceland.

Although he went to Antarctica for the experience, rather than work, the trip organised by his friend, TV presenter and wildlife photographer Mark Carwardine, led to some spectacular shots.

“We had some fantastic morning journeys in really extraordinary light through the channels between the islands and the Antarctic peninsula,” he says. “We had an extraordinary close encounter with a humpback whale and penguins. There are very strict rules about how close you could go, but the penguins seemed quite unbothered about humans and very curious. You could sit down and watch them and they would basically do their own thing and ignore you.”

Joe will exhibit the photos at some stage; for now though, his focus is on his new exhibition, View Finder, which offers a stunning new perspective of the Dales. The show, which will take place at The Station, in Richmond, will feature about 20 new “giant” images as well as pictures from previous collections.

The images have been taken from long walks, short walks and roadsides as well as views of waterfalls and railway viaducts. Despite his extensive experience and more than 30 years in photography, Joe says the weather, geology and almost austere nature of the landscape, made it by far the most challenging project he has ever done.

“The Dales is one of the hardest landscapes in all of Britain to define. It’s very elusive and mysterious,” he says. “The limestone is striking and parts of it are very characteristic, but very difficult to photograph. One of the exciting things about it was just how difficult it was and for me, it definitely remains a work in progress, I don’t think I have in any way finished or defined what I think it’s about.”

Joe was born in Exeter and moved to North Yorkshire in 1993, where he has lived ever since. His passion for photography started at Reading University and after graduating in 1980, he worked as an assistant in London and Washington DC. He went on to work for illustrated travel books and has taken photographs for The National Trust for more than 20 years.

In 2006, Amateur Photographer honoured him with their annual Power of Photography award and in 2008, he was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. As well as a series of books, cards and calendars, there is a permanent display of his work at The Joe Cornish Gallery, in Northallerton.

Although he has spent time in the Dales before, there were some places that stood out, such as Scaleber Force and Norber, just south of Ingleborough, which he stumbled upon for the first time. “The Norber area was new to me and I found that really interesting,” he says. “I’ve only been there a couple of times and I need to walk further into it.”

Some places he has returned to year after year and still not got the picture he was hoping for. The only way to deal with that kind of frustration, he says, is not to take it too seriously and to look for other opportunities. He never takes an iPod and has no interest in texting or tweeting.

“I have no idea what Twitter is, I don’t do Facebook and I keep my phone turned off – it’s just for emergencies,” he says. “For me, it’s about being connected to the landscape. You listen, you feel and you touch the surfaces of nature as well as seeing with your eyes and if you spend a lot of time on the phone or you’re tweeting or even reading or listening to music, you are not fully engaged. I’m never unhappy when I’m walking. I find it the most therapeutic process there is.”

JOE made the switch to digital in 2008 after 25 years of using film and is still coming to grips with it even now.

“I didn’t realise what a traumatic process it would be,” he says. “When you have used a particular workflow for 25 years, as I did with film, you make the odd mistake but most of the time you’re in complete control. Switching camera systems and moving to a digital workflow has been incredibly difficult and I’m still, essentially, trying to master it.”

Although he believes the prints he is making now are the best he has ever made, like many photographers he has concerns about the future of the profession as a whole.

“It’s a bit like the pains of change,” he says. “If you were a coal miner 40 years ago, you would have been confident about having work for the rest of your life and it turned out that wasn’t the case. It’s the same for photography. Photography has become ubiquitous. There are cameras in phones now – everybody can take pictures, anywhere, anytime and it costs them nothing and the value that photographers previously had attributed to them has been incredibly undermined by that.”

Having said that, Joe is confident he will carry on making pictures and, hopefully, making a living out of it. “I think the art form itself has incredible potential, but I don’t think people are ready yet to understand how precious the eyewitness tradition is in photography,” he says. “I can only photograph what is real, what is actually there, in all its rawness. That’s what I’m trying to do, really, convey a sense of wonder and pleasure and the enjoyment I have of being outdoors.”

  • View Finder by Joe Cornish will run from Saturday, March 30, to Sunday, April 28, at The Station, Richmond. All photographs will be for sale with proceeds going towards The Station charity. Free entry.