Above South Downs Way, West Sussex, 8th October 2009. (©Simon Roberts/Courtesy of Flowers, London).

In August 2007, Simon Roberts along with his then pregnant wife and their two-year-old daughter began a thirteen month trip that would see them journey the length and breadth of England in a motorhome, with the sole aim of producing a series of large-scale colour photographs that would form a survey of the English at leisure.

Titled We English, this extensive survey was informed by the likes of Tony Ray-Jones (1941-1972), Martin Parr, Tom Woods, Bill Brandt (1904-1983), and Sylvester Jacobs, amongst others, all of whom had produced insightful and seminal documents recording the English people at various periods over the last half-century. But whilst many of these  photographers approached their subject in what would would be considered a documentary nature, the work of Roberts’, like that of John Davies, reverberate with the  echoes of traditional English landscape painting, whilst remaining stoically contemporary in nature.

‘Initially, I was simply thinking about Englishness and how my upbringing had been quintessentially English. How much of this was an intrinsic part of my identity? In what ways was my idea of what constitutes an "English life" or English pastimes (if there are such things) different to those of others?, writes Roberts. ‘My own memories of holidays, for example, were infused with very particular landscapes; the lush green-ness around Derwent Water or the flinty grey skies — and pebbles — of Angmering's beaches. It seemed to me that these landscapes formed an important part of my consciousness of who I am and how I "remember" England.’

Like Blackpool, on the northeast coast of England, Skegness was just a small fishing village prior to the growth of the railway in the 1880s, which would bring an influx of tourists from the industrial heartland’s of England each summer. It is here that Roberts produced one of his first images, Skegness Beach, Lincolnshire, 12th August 2007. Whilst Skegness’ heyday has long since past, it continues to attract a large number of holiday-makers each year, holding a distinct place within English culture and history.

Above Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, Nottinghamshire, 16th June 2008. (©Simon Roberts/Courtesy of Flowers, London).

But crucially, Skegness Beach, Lincolnshire, marked a key moment in the development of Roberts’ approach to We English, which was published in book form in 2009 (Chris Boot), and selected by Parr for inclusion in his book, Best Books of the Decade (PhotoIreland, 2011). 

On seeing this photograph amongst his early contact sheets, Roberts’ knew that he had begun to develop a formal composition to his framing which would define the future direction of his work. ‘I would move away from photographing the individual and engage instead with the idea of the collective, of groups of people populating the landscape,’ writes Roberts. The elevated position from which he takes his photograph of Skegness Beach, also becomes key to the development of the series, ‘Photographing from an elevated positions (often from the rooftop of the motorhome, as it turned out) would enable me to get a greater sense of people’s interaction with the landscape and with one another.’

He would also decide that the figures in his compositions would be relatively small within the frame, but not so small that you could not make out some of the facial expressions, his subjects are wearing, and the activities that they where undertaking. ‘This way of seeing was influenced by looking at the work of 16th century Dutch and Flemish landscape painters,’ says Roberts, particularly the works Hendrick Avercamp, Peter Breugel and Lucas van Valckenborch.

Above Blackpool Promenade, Lancashire, 24th July 2008. (©Simon Roberts/Courtesy of Flowers, London).

‘Roberts’ work is significant because he combines a respect for his subject and the desire to communicate important social, economic and political issues,’ writes Greg Hobson, Curator of Photographs at the National Media Museum, ‘His approach is one of creating wide-ranging surveys of our time, which he does through eloquent and arresting photographs; images which exhibit a disciplined compositional restraint, richness of palette, and which each function as an individual narrative.’

With the laborious and time consuming process of setting up a 5x4 camera, one may have expected Roberts to have attracted unwelcome attention during the frequently very public periods of picture making. ‘But this turned out to be a help in capturing each scene as it unfolded before me, without any intervention on my part, writes Roberts. ‘I had anticipated that there might be problems in situations where there were lots of people close to the camera — like the scene on Blackpool beach — but by the time I’d finished setting up, any curious onlookers had lost interest and turned away.’

Roberts ‘Manages to combine a fascination with social rituals such as St George's day pageants and visits to the seaside with the type of huge-scale and distant large format “grand views” that appear to come straight out of the American tradition,’ suggests historian and visual sociologist Peter Hamilton, writing in the British Journal of Photography, ‘For Roberts, landscape is a site of leisure pursuits, and this viewpoint fits well with both contemporary social thought and the consumption-obsessed imagery of much current documentary. But he manages somehow to allow the sublime beauty of many of these settings through, and to make pictures of lasting quality.’

We English is at Flowers (Kingsland Road) until 19 November 2011. A monograph was published by Chris Boot in 2009.