Immersed in the forest, that rich and sometimes troubling place where we can be fearful, liberated or lost, it may not be too hard to draw parallels with one of the enduring qualities of photography. In a time when distraction and interruption are ever more apparent in our lives, the very act of photographing can leave us separate, contemplative and preoccupied with what we are looking at, what we feel and how we ever came to get to the point we have reached.
For the Northern Irish photographer Lee Stitt, walks into the forest have been paced by substantial changes in his life. At first responding to a poignant woodland whilst his father was gravely ill, he would use the time to respond to a piece of music that over time became emotionally charged - a catalyst for memories and evaluation. The photographs are in turn stark and refined -lit with a cutting light that burns into the night in some scenes and gently illuminates what it reaches in others. The forest becomes a body waken from repose- it’s substance a delicate living form. The woodland reveals its proud, then perishing foliage as the seasons turn whilst, elsewhere, canopies of higher branches become constellations of silvers and greys.
The process that underpins Lee Stitt's production is precise and revealing. The prints that make the series are refined and detailed - made with the sensitivity and control of a photographer aware of the tension between his pictures and his responses to a significant place -what was felt or what overtook him whilst alone in the forest at night. At times, the rich prints appear almost solarised, at others disorienting, whilst they remain organised and aligned to the flow of music that Stitt uses as both a spur when photographing and a spine for the work when it is shown publicly. In the second phase of the work, the photographer returned to the forest a year later and, after the passing of his father, made further responses to the same territory.
It would be tempting to gather a sense of this work against the role that the forest has played in wider European culture for centuries. In folk tales we share anxiety, as the forest becomes a difficult or dangerous space, stealing innocence, youth or ignorance. More locally, it has been a place where things can lie undisturbed - only to be unsettled and surface over time, along with their memories or consequences.
Lee Stitt seems aware of the profound depth of feeling such locations can encourage and without recourse to romance or convention - he draws on them as a place for catharsis, recollection and personal reflection towards the realization of the work as book-works and installations. Perhaps like the folk story collectors - whose recounting of stories were never originally intended for children, Lee Stitt has drawn on the lyrical motifs under the canopy of the forest to dwell on something more, something life changing, now that the sheltered dreams of youth have passed.
Written by Ken Grant