Book review: Origins – song of Nooitgedacht

Posted on 17 November 2011

Origins – song of Nootigedacht, a remote valley in the Karoo is a coffee-table treasure that seamlessly binds together photography as an art form and the ability of images to reveal the creation of a landscape.

British photographer Jennifer Gough-Cooper explores the ancient valley of Nooitgedacht through the lens of a 35 mm film camera. The resulting images paw at, reveal, and ultimately expand the valley’s history from its smallest detail to its most sweeping landscape. The 92, full-colour photos are presented in the spirit of a song and attempt to evoke the Karoo’s natural treasures with the same tempo of the valley’s steady, seemingly infinite cycle of time.

On the pages, Gough-Cooper leaves the images to speak for themselves, lightly peppering some of the spaces between photographs with stream-of-consciousness phrases that serve not to explain the images, but rather to create ones entirely on their own. There is, for the more archaeologically inquisitive, a detailed description of each image neatly packaged as an index at the end of the volume.

From her first visit to the valley in 2002, Gough was captivated by the landscape, but it was only later that she found inspiration for the form of the book.

‘One day, certain individual rocks in the landscape caught my attention: the surface of one huge boulder resembled our planet as one might imagine it in its molten state straight from the fire of creation; another was scribbled with lines by a mysterious wayward writer; yet another was host to such an incredible pattern of fiery lichen, it appeared like a painting of galaxies travelling in infinite space,’ says Gough. ‘Clearly the valley was defined by rock, the ancient bones of the earth, and blessed with life-giving, pure waters flowing from the mountains. This is the story that I have endeavoured to describe with my camera.’

A quote that stands isolated on the opening pages sums up Gough-Cooper’s own passion and attention to detail in this work:

‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.’

-William Blake

Published by Wild Almond Press, Origins is available in three editions. There is a  collector’s edition (25 copies only), subscriber’s edition (100 copies) and a standard edition all of which can be ordered from Publishing Print Matters, email [email protected].

 

The editions are priced as follows:

Standard edition: with hard cover and dust jacket – R499

Subscriber’s edition: with slip case, signed and numbered by the author – R899

Collector’s edition: boxed with an original photogravure, signed and numbered by the author – R8 900

 






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