Only The Sunny Hours
Contemporary Photography with a Brownie 127

Curated by Cally Trench

Philip Lee

Only The Sunny Hours


Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Wheat Field - Summer 2015 - Dagnall
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Chalk Pit Lake - Summer 2015 - Pitstone
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Monument Drive - Autumn 2015 - Ashridge Estate
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
The Vale from the Beacon - Autumn 2015 - Ashridge Estate
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Ivinghoe Beacon from the Vale - Winter 2016 - Dagnall
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Ashridge from the Vale - Winter 2016 - Dagnall
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Bluebell Wood - Spring 2016 - Ashridge Estate
Black and white 127 film

Brownie 127 photography by Philip Lee

Philip Lee
Rape Field - Spring 2016 - Edlesborough
Black and white 127 film

Philip Lee writes: Live performance is central to my work. For the Brownie 127 project, I decided to make photographs of landscapes and my naked body in each season. I wanted to press the shutter button myself, and do the work solo. This was a challenge when the Brownie 127 camera needs the subject to be at least five feet away and has no timer release. I chose to solve the problem by placing a mirror in the landscape, thus including the camera in the image and making it clear how the photographs were taken.

I was reminded of using my parents' Box Brownie as a small, shy child. For me it was important to use the Brownie 127 camera as I would have taken photographs then, when there was no opportunity to improve photographs digitally, and I have therefore left these photographs unaltered.

Philip Lee is a performance artist; this is reflected in his photographs, films, books and ceramic sculpture. He performs for camera, making photographs and films. His books of photographs, both solo and collaboratively with Cally Trench, are in the collections of the Tate, V&A and British Library in London, and the Kunstbibliothek, Berlin and MICA, Baltimore.

Recent exhibitions include Future Legacies: Collections, Collecting and Artists' Books, The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds University (2017), Cally Trench / Philip Lee: Artists' Books, Ravensbourne, London (2017-18); Draw/Bridge, Zug/Brücke, curated by Alex Dewart in 2017 in Berlin (March) and London (August); and Festal Favours at Charlbury, Oxfordshire, curated by Clare Carswell (2017). Philip Lee has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins. His research at the European Ceramics Workshop Centre (EKWC) in The Netherlands in 2014 focused on the overlap of performance and ceramics.

Cally Trench's homepage