Book Review: Vale by Robert Darch

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Book Review: Vale by Robert Darch

March 31st, 2021 by Cary Benbow

Vale is the latest book by photographer Robert Darch. Darch creates narrative fictions which explore ideas and feelings based on his early adulthood. The sense of loss he experienced in his twenties is expressed in eerie or spooky scenes of the rural idyllic English countryside. These scenes sometimes include figures, and oftentimes we are shown images which hint at something that lies just below the surface. Something left unsaid, but perceived by the viewer nonetheless. I’d call the book a self portrait… as in his previous book The Moor, Darch depicts dark reflections of real world landscapes, melancholy, and invented memory vignettes to create compelling storytelling.

Most of the tension in Vale is apparent even without the knowledge of Darch’s backstory. The reader has the benefit of Dan Cox’s essay and his insight on the matter: “At the age of 22, Darch suffered from a minor stroke, followed by a period of ill-health which would affect him for the majority of his twenties. As a coping mechanism during convalescence, he retreated into a world of fictional narratives, of indoor spaces and eventually a physical move back to his familial home of Devon. Slowly, he began to reset his narratives, his place in the world, and the expectations of his youth. An unseen enemy threatening his own body and psyche was mitigated by escapism and wish-fulfilment.”

Darch presents the reader with 36 images in this book. We see landscapes and portraits. Dramatic low light of a morning or evening illuminates a young man swimming, or another young man standing in the woods with a camera slung around his neck (the photographer personified?), or a young woman gazing upward while crouched beneath a large tent on the mossy, soft, fern-covered wilderness. These exteriors are contrasted by interior scenes with light dramatically bouncing around from a window then out into the hallway, a family room or parlor with an unseen light source reflecting off a large mirror, and a bedroom with partially opened door to suggest we are invited to look inside. We see an empty bed with framed needle point hanging on the wall above the headboard. The emotionally charged setting and the saying, “Come unto Me… and I will give you REST”, is stitched beneath soft-colored flowers. Compare and contrast this scene with others which feature young men and women walking through a golden-lit field of grass, exploring the woods, or a woman breastfeeding a baby while she stares directly at the viewer. An entire panoply of people, places and times are laid bare. The setting is ‘the halcyon days of young adulthood’ and these people are beautiful.

Are these scenes of actual experiences, or lost experiences? Are these equivalents to imagined afternoons? Could these be shadows of times to come, or stories recounting a youth full of exploration and living life deliberately? Or are we viewing these scenes from behind the dark side of the mirror? I get the strong impression that Darch wishes to give us the sense that these seemingly idyllic views are not as they seem. The fact that I have more questions than answers is one of the reasons why the work resonates so strongly with me and draws me in further. I want to experience this, I want to lie in the fields and walk through the woods, yet something also scares me about it. Darch’s fictional ‘Vale’ could be called the Uncanny Valley… ironic in this case because the term is most often used in the field of aesthetics. Bear with me… the concept suggests that humanoid objects (insert Darch’s vignettes here) which imperfectly resemble actual human beings (real vignettes) provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers. This is the stuff of nightmares.

Whether real, imagined, or wistful remembrance, Darch skillfully presents a story which Dan Cox perceptively describes as such, “In the liminal space between fiction, narrative and reality, the intentions and outcomes of Vale have become intractably intertwined. However, we must respect the fictional boundaries of this place as if they were reality, even as this world itself begins to fall apart. Indeed, we might conclude that in our current situation within 2020, a sense of a loss of time is what might be driving our own search for the promise of truth that nostalgia seems to offer. But even as we are in pursuit of that promise, we may need to discard the veracity apparently offered by photography, recognising and ultimately embracing Vale as the manifestation of a lost time, with all the weight that such a loss implies.”

Vale
by Robert Darch
Self Published in 2020 by artists imprint Lido Books
Cover Illustration by Anna Skeels
Essay by Dan Cox
Cover Design by Nia Gould
64 Pages / 220 x 170mm

Learn more about Robert Darch’s work and purchase Vale at: https://www.robertdarch.com/

About Cary Benbow

Photographer, Writer, Publisher of Wobneb Magazine

View all posts by Cary Benbow →

Location: Online Type: Book Review

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