I know James Ravilious has been discussed on Photrio before (here), but I don't think anyone referred to the Beaford Archive's website in that thread. Possibly the website didn't exist then. So I thought I'd start a new thread, perhaps scooping up some new readers.
For those who don't know, James Ravilious was commissioned by the Beaford Archive to document local community life in north Devon (UK). He brought to that brief his own very high artistic aims, undoubtedly influenced by his father (Eric Ravilious) and mother (Tirzah Garwood) and by an art training, but also by exposure to a lot of paintings and photographs. It would be silly to give more background here, because the definitive reference is the lovely biography (James Ravilious - A Life) by his widow Robin Ravilious.
The Beaford Archive has 531 web pages of Ravilious' photos, 21 to a page. So there are far more images than you can find in books or other websites. Before Ravilious died [edit: obviously before!], he categorised the photos by his personal standards, into 'Best', 'Good', 'Fair' and 'Poor'. There are respectively 486, 1209, 6739 and 220 of these on display. There are also 2348 contact sheets, so those who are interested to see how he worked can study how he worked the scene. However, it's fairly obvious that he conscientiously followed his brief to document, taking many photographs where the chance of making a satisfying 'keeper' was zero.
I have to warn you that the web site is not very easy to navigate. You can choose to sort the Ravilious pages by ascending or descending date, or by a default sort ("order by suggested - reverse") which ranks the photos from Best to Poor. The navigation buttons then allow you to progress through the pages. Jumping is limited to 2 or 3 pages. The only way to jump to a specific page is to edit the URL in your browser (eg .../page/237/). The page you then arrive at on will depend on the sort order you have chosen.
This is just the first photo in the archive, but it seems typical of Ravilious' gentle humour. It could seem to be a mundane photo of British commercial vehicles in the 1970s, until you notice the chickens.
For those who don't know, James Ravilious was commissioned by the Beaford Archive to document local community life in north Devon (UK). He brought to that brief his own very high artistic aims, undoubtedly influenced by his father (Eric Ravilious) and mother (Tirzah Garwood) and by an art training, but also by exposure to a lot of paintings and photographs. It would be silly to give more background here, because the definitive reference is the lovely biography (James Ravilious - A Life) by his widow Robin Ravilious.
The Beaford Archive has 531 web pages of Ravilious' photos, 21 to a page. So there are far more images than you can find in books or other websites. Before Ravilious died [edit: obviously before!], he categorised the photos by his personal standards, into 'Best', 'Good', 'Fair' and 'Poor'. There are respectively 486, 1209, 6739 and 220 of these on display. There are also 2348 contact sheets, so those who are interested to see how he worked can study how he worked the scene. However, it's fairly obvious that he conscientiously followed his brief to document, taking many photographs where the chance of making a satisfying 'keeper' was zero.
I have to warn you that the web site is not very easy to navigate. You can choose to sort the Ravilious pages by ascending or descending date, or by a default sort ("order by suggested - reverse") which ranks the photos from Best to Poor. The navigation buttons then allow you to progress through the pages. Jumping is limited to 2 or 3 pages. The only way to jump to a specific page is to edit the URL in your browser (eg .../page/237/). The page you then arrive at on will depend on the sort order you have chosen.
This is just the first photo in the archive, but it seems typical of Ravilious' gentle humour. It could seem to be a mundane photo of British commercial vehicles in the 1970s, until you notice the chickens.
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