Threave

Threave has a visitor centre, attached to a large estate and farm, which is used to train gardeners. My brief was to photograph in winter and spring, to create an exhibition showing the estate and farm in a new way. Graven Images redesigned the interior of the centre, where my exhibition of twenty framed prints hung, and they also digitally enlarged three photographs onto metal panels. In spring I took many colour images of the landscape and flowers which they put onto panels. the weather was difficult, and the foot and mouth crisis restricted me, but I got many strong photographs. The project was to put photographic art into a place which would usually show obvious, picturesque, or amateur imagery, and challenge the visitors to see something new. My work suited the project as I like to photograph farmland and gardens, and have a track record of doing abstract, and metaphorical imagery based on nature, and man's intervention in the landscape. I knew the county of Dumfries and Galloway from childhood, and enjoyed the commission. I was guided round the estate and farm for a day by the designer and two managers, to provide a background to the place, and to discuss the approach. I was given free reign to do what I wanted, and also did a portrait of the head gardener. I worked in my usual way, but also took many images in spring to capture the flowers, knowing these would have a wide appeal.

Peter Cattrell

Research Interests
Landscape photography
Portrait photography
Analogue archival and fine printing to
museum and gallery standard
Digital media

Current Research

With an interest in literature and history, my creative work in photography is interpretations of the landscape of Europe, informed by historical research, and connected to themes of identity, association, and personal loss. I have produced a successful touring exhibition on the landscape of the Great War, which I visited again in 2006, and produced some more work. I envisage a solo publication to coincide with the 100th anniversary in 2016. The approach is to show the land as a memorial in itself, with the land still showing scars of the conflict, but also a regeneration of the land to farming. The cutting of a maze crop, or lines of winter stubble where men were cut down by rifle fire, or mine craters deeply moulding the land are metaphors with a personal sense of place. This show includes personal memorabilia and letters to juxtapose the contemporary photographs.

I have been researching a project on the French Huguenots who came to England to avoid persecution in 1700, and intend to exhibit this work in 2009. This relates to my ancestors the Roubels, from Ruffec in the Charente Maritime region of France, who came to Westminster in London. The project relates to my interest in the ideas of personal identity, and also of a displaced people - themes that I have seen recurring whilst degree teaching at the UoAL, notably with students of Jewish, or African descent. An Australian genealogist has published a book on the Roubel family, and I am using this as a basis for the work, as well as linking up with archives and museums in London.

Working in black and white and recently in colour, I am well known for fine printing my own, and other photographers work. I printed an exhibition at the darkrooms of the Imperial War Museum from glass plate negatives taken in Scotland in 1914 - 18, of women working doing traditionally 'men's jobs' in factories and industry. This was exhibited in Edinburgh at the National Portrait gallery.

I am also continuing to print on silver paper to present galleries with recent landscape work. Currently I am experimenting with digital forms of capture and printing, as many companies have stopped producing silver based paper. I am doing high resolution scanning of my career archive of creative work on film, and I have been linking up with Shelley Rose the digital printing technician at CSM.

• http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/61/