The Silent Land / Jesse Alexander

“The Silent Land examines the life-affirming properties of forests, the way in which they interact with our psychological and physical defences… but it also looks at the darker sides of the woods and the melancholy that is at their heart.”

Colin Pantall

The Silent Land documents a Forestry Commission plantation managed for timber and recreational use, which grows on the remains of ancient lead works on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. This is where a man chose to end his life in 2016. Affected by this tragic event in a place he knew intimately, Jesse Alexander used the memorializing act of photography to explore the elegiac potential of the forest, quietly observing the seasonal changes and their cycles. It invites questions around the paradox of outdoor, ‘natural’ spaces – how these provide well documented benefits for health and wellbeing, but are often infused with pathos and melancholy, and are frequently the destination of choice for those seeking to end their lives.

The series is accompanied by a text by Jacky Bowring PhD, Professor of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University, New Zealand, and author of A Field Guide to Melancholy (2008) and Melancholy and the Landscape: Locating Sadness, Memory and Reflection in the Landscape (2017).

Design by Victoria Forrest

Paperbound with foiling

37 colour photographs

64 pages

180 x 214 mm

ISBN 978-0-9570255-6-1

Edition of 300, signed and numbered

https://www.jessealexander.co.uk/thesilentland