CRPR Seminar - Robin Ravilious

Born at Eastbourne in 1939, the son of artists Eric and Tirzah Ravilious, James also trained as an artist, but switched to (self-taught) photography on discovering the work of the great documentary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1969.

Having married Robin, a Devonian, he moved to her village, Dolton near Torrington,  in 1972, where he found part time work on the Beaford Archive, a small project by a neighbouring arts centre to record some of the special qualities of North Devon - a rural area which was still remarkably traditional even in the 1970s. Knowing that major change was inevitable, James rapidly became hooked, and eventually worked on this huge task obsessively for over seventeen years making around 79,000 images of people, landscapes, farming, day-to-day village life, and special occasions, in one small area little more than twenty miles across.  This body of work - negatives and copyright - belongs to the Beaford Archive. It is considered unique in its timespan, intimacy, and artistic approach.
 
Robin introduced James to the people and places she knew from childhood, and was often involved with his work, writing about it, and travelling with him on many of his explorations. She will talk about her homeland, and James’s response to it.