Hinterland, Mark Cator

I’ve been looking through a pile of books that have remained largely untouched since their pre-Christmas purchase. The term ‘Book Review’ may be a little too strong, so perhaps this is more of a taster/overview. Whilst  it’s hardly going to be on the scale of One Year Of Books, I’m planning to share a few of my investments over the coming weeks – what better way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon?

First up is Mark Cator‘s Hinterland, a personal exploration of Norfolk from 1995-2005. In his statement, he explains how he was documenting a ‘…passing world, the chronology of destruction and creation.’ He talks of grappling with ‘the paradigms of convenience and confinement, the disingenuous approach to planning, the trust in political compromise and the nostalgic visual legacy of the post industrial environment.’

I’m a sucker for large format lanscapes, so I was always going to be drawn to this work. The mundane, pristine sanctuaries of suburbia, the uneasy sights of new development projects, and out-posts of architectural abandon manifesting themselves in park and rides… Cator’s work embraces the conflict of oddities and the banal, and by mixing past, present and future, he achieves a decent pacing to the book.

On rare occasions, my personal responses are somewhat diminished – close-ups of foliage and flowers seem to lack the critical and subversive eye which serves Cator so well in shots such as the drain cover below.

Hints of Gursky occasionally seep into the work, along with stylistic choices which seem pre-empt the work of Simon Roberts and Mark Power, with 26 Different Endings being a constant point of reference in the back of my mind.

Cator’s work is a complex and personal response to a local landscape that he is very familiar with. On a personal level, my one slight criticism would be that the more allegorical images of cloud-scapes and flowers leave me a little numb, yet these are relatively few and far between in comparison to the scenes which on the surface are more literate, but which for me, have far greater potential for discussion.