Peter Woodburn

I am an 'auteur-photographe', living and working in France, and specializing in the creation and printing of original landscape and still life images on paper. I use both single frame and multiple frame (compound) capture methods.

These locations are grouped broadly in two regions 1) the area of the French Jura near Gex (the town in which I live and have my home and workshop) and the valley area below the high peaks of the Jura, known as the 'pays de Gex' and 2) several areas and ecosystems around Narbonne on the western part of the French Mediterranean coast and especially the areas of saline marsh, inland lagoons, canals and salt-pans in and around Gruissan, the port and resort to the west of Narbonne Plage. Near these, but distinct, another place entirely which I have photographed for decades, made up of the river, 'causse', 'pinede' and agricultural landscapes around Ornaisons, a village which is some 15km inland from Narbonne. I have spent my summers here, walked and run within and between these localities, and taken photographs for over twenty years.

These literal geographical details form the framework for an imaginative geography and associated mythology which is implicit only in the images I make, but which is powerf...

I am a self-taught photographer. I have an MA from Cambridge University where I studied English and gained a first class degree and was successively a senior and then research scholar. I learnt the basis of black and white film (silver chemistry) processing and printing during my studies at this time, then discovered and explored the history of photography as a means of artistic expression during a period of PhD research.


The focus of this work was an investigation of traditions and discontinuities, since the period of high Romanticism, in the history of poetry in English that is centered on reference to or images of landscape.

Following this research, and with my thesis unfinished, I became a teacher of English and literature and taught in British state comprehensive schools for four years before moving to France, where I worked in international sections in French state schools, becomong Head of the English National Programme in the 'Lycee International de Ferney-Voltaire', near Geneva and working for much of the time in rooms with a direct view of Mont Blanc, one of the world's most famed and recognizable landscape sites. (My own work generally operates on another scale and avoids such places.)

Photography, painting, ...

From 2019
With Art3F in France: week-end art fairs in Lyon (2019), Paris (2020), La Roche sous Foron (2020 & 2021),
Mulhouse (2021)
With the Nartworks association in Italy: group exhibitions in Naples (2020), Milan (2021) and Venice (2021)
With Itsliquid Group in Italy; group exhibition in Venice (2021)
With Galerie Meceanvie, Montreuil Paris: showed work at the Spectrum, Miami (USA) art fair (2022)
Praxis Gallery, Minneapolis (USA) participated in Liquid Sky exhibition (2021)
Roz In Winter Gallery, Barbizon, France, participated in collective spring exhibition (2021)
No 75 rue du commerce, Gex, France; participation in group exhibition in pop-up gallery (2021)
The Art Gallery, Espace Candide, Ferney-Voltaire, France: showed selection of work in joint exhibition (2022)