In a plush Mayfair drawing room, Charles March is talking about his restored life as a professional photographer after 20 years dedicated to his family estate at Goodwood. “I feel I’m going back to where I was before that, and making up for all that time on the estate,” the dashing 57-year old says with a smile. The return is marked by his first exhibition, a collection of large-scale black and white and colour photographs of trees showing not in a white-walled Mayfair gallery but Bermondsey’s Project Space managed by Crisis.
For most people who know Charles, Earl of March, photography doesn’t match his identity as photographer or mentor of Crisis homeless ‘clients,’ but as owner and manager of Goodwood, “the sporting estate.” Since taking the baton from his father, the 10th Duke of Richmond and Lennox in 1992, he has developed its international identity through racing events - Glorious Goodwood (horses) and Festival of Speed (cars), and his creation of the golf course and Cass Sculpture Park. And now the list includes his first love. “When I left London and came back to Goodwood,” he says, “I became so focussed on other things that I put photography out of my mind…until about four years ago, when I started photographing the trees. They have always played a big part in my life and I’ve always been very conscious of their presence. I’d photographed some since before I was 12.”
That intimate connection with nature is apparent in March’s passionate descriptions of the trees he works with. The results are original, almost abstract interpretations of subjects he endows with almost animist character. “Library Lawn is an almost mystical image,” he says, “A gorgeous 300-year old Mediterranean Cork Oak brought over in the 18th century by my great grand-father. It’s visible from all the windows facing South and gets the evening sun; there’s a moment when that low golden light makes the whole thing shimmer and light up - not a vertical shimmer, more of a stammer across it.”
In contrast, the spindly trees in High Wood 2 are so overwhelmingly green as to suggest digital manipulation. “I use a digital camera,” he admits, “But I never photo-shop,” he says firmly, “This is part of an ancient woodland and I’m keen on the natural range of bright greens in the series.” As each photograph is vastly enlarged – some up to nine feet – the colours often merge into abstract designs.
With the family’s renowned art collection, March reveals that photography was also important. His grand-father, “a good photographer and an artist, had a lot of interests – cars, engineering and photography – which were mine too. He bought me my first enlarger.” The seed was sewn: at school, he was inspired by the Master who taught photography and dark-room printing – “a magical experience,” he recalls, “But Eton had no interest for me and I left at 16.”
A year later and for 12 months, he shot stills for Stanley Kubrick’s film, “Barry Lyndon,” and still reveres his support and advice. The experimental cinematography of Kubrick and Ken Adams [Oscar-winning Production Designer] clearly influenced his advertising future. But before that move, the teenager spent nine months in North Kenya, living amongst the Buraan tribe and photographing patients at the Chief’s mobile clinic. “I used pictures for words, as we didn’t speak each other’s languages, and I read a lot. The experience fulfilled the education I never had at Eton!” he laughed.
After Kenya, he plunged into studio life and advertising, known as Charles Settrington. He describes the manual labour involved in still lifes which created “magic images which tricked the brain.” His ads for Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut involved trend-setting trompe l’oeil and lighting experiments.
In contrast, shooting trees is simple and solitary and involves a fixed lens, slow shutter speeds and the crucial, camera shaking. “The shaking idea came when I was in the woods. I wanted something more than photographing the trees than was there, not just a documentary image but an emotional thing that may not be obvious. Shaking in different ways creates the random element, and is vertical or horizontal according to the flow of the tree. For “Godinwood Rise, I jolted the camera downwards. With the chestnut trees in Gothic Avenueglowing orange in the evening light, this had to be absolutely perfect so that when the camera moves, it creates a golden streak on the trunk.”
March’s slow, meticulous technique shares the slowness of painting and in places, evokes patches of Turner landscapes. Perhaps it explains his escape from the noise and speed of horses and racing cars and into the silent language of trees.