Henry Carroll’s American landscape photography presents nature’s grand spectacles but, fenced off, the geographical features he depicts are named, delineated and made safe, exemplifying man’s instinctual efforts to possess his environment. His work forms a somewhat wistful rejoinder to 19th century US photographers and their depiction of untamed nature as metaphor for freedom. Carroll pays homage to and upends their grand interpretation and by focusing upon signs of man’s involvement he emphasises the burlesque of areas existing only to be observed or, awaiting habitation, theatrical stages existing between performances.

In reality Carroll’s photographs are taken from meticulously produced scale models and, as such, they exist only as images, isolated from the rest of the world. The complexity of Carroll’s work lies in this duality, the sheer tangibility of his images and the sense or memory of knowing his landscapes, undermined as their implausibility rises to the fore, whilst calling into question notions of permanence, presence, and reality.

Henry Carroll is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited widely and his first book, Fourteen Zebra, published by John Blake, is just published.