A Landscape of Questions: Ian Howorth’s Journey into Ambiguity
(This is the story behind the photograph—a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
A great photograph should leave you with more questions than answers.
It shouldn’t just show a place, it should make you wonder about it. Ian Howorth’s work does exactly that, capturing a landscape that feels both real and unreal at the same time. This photo doesn’t give you clear details about where it was taken or what it means. Instead, it makes you pause and think.
Not knowing is part of the experience. Ian believes mystery makes an image more powerful. That’s why he Doesn’t reveal the location and avoids adding obvious clues. If you don’t know where a place is, you can imagine it in your own way. This approach makes his work stand out in a world where so many images explain too much.
Ian had wanted to visit this place for a long time. He didn’t know exactly what he would find there, but he felt it would be special. On the day he took this photograph, Ian went out for a walk, and when he saw this landscape, he knew immediately that this was what he had been looking for.
“So this image is an image that I got very lucky with,” Ian says. “I’d been wanting to go to that location for a very long time and I knew I was up there but I didn’t necessarily know what I was gonna get and it just so happened that this one time that I went up there for a walk it happened to be kind of what I wanted.”
At first glance, the landscape might look peaceful and normal. There is a calm lake reflecting the sky and clouds, and gentle hills in the background. But when you look again, you notice something unusual. The bottom of the image looks different, almost black-and-white, like someone had painted it. It feels mysterious, as if it doesn’t belong to the rest of the scene.
“I love the fact that the image is slightly weird,” Ian explains. “You get this kind of traditional landscape in the top two-thirds, but the bottom third looks black and white and almost man-made and slightly strange. And that’s kind of what I liked.”
For Ian, photography is not about clearly showing exactly where something is. Instead, it’s about making people curious, about asking questions rather than giving answers.
“I love ambiguity in pretty much all of my images. If I can have it in every image, I probably would,” he says. “I don’t like anyone to ask me where it was taken. Like you will get no answers from me. I don’t give away things like this because for me it shatters the illusion of the image. If someone tells you how a magic trick is done, it stops being fun and interesting, right?”
Creating an image that makes people curious is important for Ian. He chooses not to photograph the perfect landscapes with clear skies or beautiful trees. Instead, he chooses places like this one, places that seem familiar but are slightly strange.
“People always inhabit a place, always,” Ian reflects. “So for me, an image like this tells me, okay, if I’m going to tell a story about people and I need to place them, this is the kind of image that I want to take. Something a bit more ambiguous. It might do something similar as a normal landscape will, but it asks more questions.”
This image represents where Ian’s mind is now. In the past, he wasn’t interested in photographing landscapes. But now he sees their value.
“For me, it’s like, it’s a representation of where my head is now, as opposed to the past, where it wouldn’t have been there,” Ian says. “My interest in landscapes was non-existent. Now I’m understanding more the value of what it can do for me. So for me, it’s just like, OK, I’ve got this. I can put that in the bank and then fish it out later when I need it.”
Through this photograph, Ian discovered something important about himself. Photography isn’t just capturing what’s in front of him, it’s about capturing what he sees in his mind.
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