Entre-deux: from East Sussex to Picardie: a visual study of the river Somme

Cooke was commissioned by the French arts organisation Diaphane to research and document an aspect of Picardy in northern France of his choosing. Constrained by time, Cooke elected to analyse and document the course of the River Somme as an archetypal contemporary landscape linked geologically to the Solent and the riparian riverscapes of southern England. The body of images from which he selected his contribution to the resulting exhibition was developed during an intensive week-long journey on the Somme. Though the Somme has a particular significance with reference to World War One, rather than focusing on the valley as a memorial site revisited and understood through a series of monuments and bridges, Cooke’s focus was on capturing the physical and geological qualities of the river, its landscape and modern life on, and at, the water’s edge. This project, comprised of colour and black and white medium format photographs, formed the basis for the body of work inRiparian. It was first shown at the Galerie Nationale de la Tapisserie in Beauvais in France in 2008 and in Brighton in the UK under the titleEntre-deux. The exhibition marked an exchange of three French and three UK photographic artists from the regions on either side of the English Channel (Claire Dignocourt, Benjamin Teissedre and Adriana Wattel from France, and Jim Cooke, Nigel Green and Liz Hingley from the UK). The title of the exhibition had a particular resonance, with each artist recording specific themes or places in their non-domicile country.