Food & Farming: An Urban Perspective > Introduction by Ian Bell
THE PHOTOGRAPHS HERE were taken by London-based fashion photographer Kevin Foord in various rural locations in Britain between 2005 and 2007. They were taken as part of a project that began as an attempt to record images of contemporary British agriculture, but evolved into something more idiosyncratic.
Foord began the project as a spare-time activity with his friend, the author Richard Benson. The two men have contrasting views of the countryside. Having spent most of his life in or near London, Foord considers himself a thorough urbanite. Benson lives in London himself, but grew up on a family farm in Yorkshire. As the pair began to travel around the country together, Benson became interested in the ways in which Foord saw things. The photographer took an interest in objects and locations that the writer took for granted, and asked questions he had never asked himself. As Benson began to scribble these observations and questions down in a notebook, the project developed into a record of an individual urban perspective on farming in Britain today.
Neither Foord nor Benson set out with plans to show the pictures, but a chance conversation between Benson and myself in a pub – origin of all the best ideas, of course – made me wonder; could a selection of these images, with some explanatory text, help the Addington Fund in its attempts to foster understanding between farming and urban communities? I felt the answer was “yes”, and so after some discussion Foord and Benson set to work, picking out pictures that told stories about farming, about the way urban people see farming and, indeed, about the experiences of the photographer and author.
I was interested to learn that although the two men had anticipated wariness, farmers had in fact been welcoming and had actually encouraged them. For various reasons, many people in agriculture are becoming aware of the need to improve communications with the public, just as some non-farmers are taking more interest in where their food is produced. The words and pictures here surely belong to this process, and I hope people on both sides enjoy it as much as I have done.
Ian Bell, Director
The ARC-Addington Fund, August 2007