By Ruth D'Alessandro, The Wildlife Gardener

The Wildlife Gardener loves photography. Even though the poet WH Auden once said, ‘The camera always lies. It just ain’t art’, I would always much rather go to a photographic exhibition than an art one. And what does he mean by ‘the camera always lies?’ So nobody picks up a paintbrush and adds something to a scene that wasn’t there to start with? Get real, Wystan Hugh, Photoshop hadn’t even been invented when you said that.

And what better days to go out taking photos than snowy ones? In April 2008, snow fell on the North Downs. La famille Wildlife Gardener joined other local families on the sloping field at the back of the house, some with hand-crafted Norwegian sledges (hedge fund manager), others with cushions stuffed into Bags for Life (us) for some jolly slippy slidey japes. I even took some arty photos of the Junior Wildlife Gardeners:

After an hour or so of snow play I was soaked through, fingers and toes numb, nose red, hair hanging down like drippy rats’ tails. As I retreated back to the house to get a fire lit I noticed a man with a very large Victorian-looking plate camera mounted on a tripod photographing the toboggany goings-on.

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Fascinated, I interrogated him to find out why he had brought a 5 x 4 plate camera into a snowy playing field. The man was Simon Roberts, a professional photographer working on a commissioned photographic book, titled We English.

Simon Roberts travelled throughout England between August 2007 and September 2008 for this portfolio of large-format tableaux photographs of the English at leisure. Roberts' national survey was informed by the photography of his predecessors and by the romantic tradition of English landscape painting. Photographing ordinary people engaged in a variety of pastimes, Roberts finds beauty in the mundane...

And so he had rocked up in Tandridge on the most picturesque of snowy days. We exchanged a couple of emails. And in the last few days I was notified that We English is about to be published in October 2009, and it includes a photo taken that day on Tandridge Golf course!

Tandridge Golf Course, Oxted, Surrey, 2nd April 2008 Photograph © Simon Roberts / Chris Boot Ltd

Have a look at Simon’s other photographs on the We English website.

I really like them: they’re elegiac and whimsical. I feel that they highlight the innate insularity of the English: although people are together in the photographs, they are subdivided into their little groups, with subtle exclusion zones round themselves. Combine this with backdrops of the luscious English countryside: the big sky of East Anglia, the lush greenery of the Home Counties, the troddenness of the Malverns, the gunmetal grey of most of the British waters and you get an original view of what it’s like to live in England and maybe even BE English. We’ve all done some of the pastimes pictured, after all. And Simon’s photographic style is influential and to be admired.

Behind the Wildlife Gardener’s House, 2nd February 2009 Photograph © The Wildlife Gardener