View across Piel Channel from Snab Point, Walney Island

View across Piel Channel from Snab Point, Walney Island 5.12.2007, large format photograph by Jem Southam (1950-).

Panoramic view of estuary in winter beneath a grey sky. The far distant shore is visible and to right of composition the remains of an abandoned car can be seen in the estuary. The foreground is filled with saltmarsh plants.

Jem Southam is one of the UK's leading landscape photographers. For the exhibition 'Clouds Descending' at Tullie House, from which this work was purchased for the collections, Southam retraced L S Lowry's steps, walking the 50 mile stretch of Cumbrian coast from Maryport to Barrow-in-Furness. He produced a series of photographs that focus on the relationship between the landscape and manmade remnants of the region’s industrial past – including harbours, plants, chimneys and slag heaps. His series of photographs were shown alongside a selection of paintings by LS Lowry as well as contributions from the walking poet, Harriet Tarlo; art historian, Nick Alfrey; photography writer, David Chandler; Lowry expert, Lindsay Brooks; ornithologist, Math Southam and geologist, J Hamlyn.  Objects from the museum’s collections of fine art, social history and natural sciences were also exhibited to illustrate how a single view can hold multiple meanings.