The British Library holds six volumes of the Pencil of Nature by Henry Fox Talbot. I first heard of this book in 1972 when I attended Northwich Art College in Cheshire. Oscar Rowley, the lecturer in photography, said that everything you wanted to understand about photography was to be found in Talbot’s book, but the reproduced images Oscar showed me bore little connection to the commercial world of photography I was heading for. Yet, thirty-eight years later, on a golden autumnal morning I sat waiting in the British Library for the book of six volumes to come out from the storage room and into my gloved hands. Reverentially turning the pages I understood what Oscar had tried to tell me about the book. The Pencil of Nature was one of three copies of the original; I was holding in my hands an equivalent, not the real thing, yet that didn’t diminish its effect on me. In fact it helped to confirm what I had come to understand photography to be.

My fifty-year journey in photography involved me working in advertising and editorial photography and running my studio in Clerkenwell, London. I worked with major charities such the Royal British Legion and Scope and on government public information campaigns that involved meeting ministers in Whitehall. I also worked on advertising campaigns for most of the major banks such as Barclays, National Westminster, The Halifax and the Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria. My editorial commissions involved meeting and photographing people in the media such as Anita Roddick and June Whitfield. Location commissions involved travelling throughout Europe, America and South Africa.

My journey began anew in 2018; I live minutes away from the South Downs and I have been walking on them for over twenty years, so I know the landscape quite well to create work that reflects how I feel about the Downs. The ongoing works, Downland Gloaming and Downland Impressions, are the result of my deep affection for this beautiful landscape.

Allan Grainger, 2020.