“If moving image technology had been accessible in the 18th and 19th centuries, would more artists have used it to portray the tumultuous, terrifying scenes they were painting?” Posing this striking question is 21-year-old photography student Shona Sterland. Born and raised in the industrial city of Manchester, her present project explores the relationship between sublime landscape and the moving image.
In keeping with our unevenly developed city, Shona uses a combination of analogue and digital cameras. She has recently begun experiments with an 8mm film camera, to see the difference analogue makes for moving image technology. Her favourite lens is a 50mm, as it is best for the landscape photographs in which she specialises.
As evident from her work, Shona favours black-and-white photographs, lending a nostalgia to her pieces.
In her research, Shona connects the sublimity and liminality of the natural landscape to the uncanny. Mark Fisher defines the uncanny as “the strange within the familiar, the strangely familiar, the familiar as strange.”
Shona states that moving images have changed the way people view photographs, and can bring an entirely new feeling to landscape scenery.
She believes that photography in her hometown has a lot of range and potential. Manchester lends itself to images of architecture, streets, or fashion, but due to its industrial heritage, finding landscapes is difficult. However, Shona departs from typical imagery of the city and looks outwards.
In the future, Shona hopes to work as a mentor for children, or as a teaching assistant in a university, though she also hopes to have her work in a gallery and published.
To see more of Shona Sterland’s work, check out and follow her Instagram @ssterland
Jill Furmanovsky is ‘Photographing the Invisible’ in her history making exhibition
With ‘The Ambassadors’, Hew Locke seeks to deliver an important message
Traces of Displacement: The Whitworth confronts history in their latest exhibition
