Casey Moore

But For The Wisdom

The spark for Casey Moore’s ongoing photographic series But For the Wisdom started in 2018, when the photographer happened upon a verge on the side of a road overflowing with wild flowers. A few days later he went back and shot his first meadow. It wasn’t obvious at the time as to why he shot a double exposure on 10 x 8 film, but in hindsight it became clear that this was the right technique to capture the riot of life and beauty he found in that meadow.

Two years later, Moore deliberately set out to create a rush of images in the series which now amounts to about 20 compositions. Bursting with life and teaming with detail, these large format images do something that Moore’s more traditional landscapes haven’t been able to do. While celebrating the majesty of nature as so much of Moore’s work does, But For the Wisdom fully immerses the viewer in an abundance of impossible detail. The freedom in the process - Moore doesn’t see the final image until he has developed it in the darkroom - comes across in the final shot. The two compositions overlap and layer, reverberating an energy that is particular only to nature. They, quite literally, teem with life.

There is also a weighted undertone to the series. Struck by a phrase attributed to Eric Weinstein -  “We have become gods but for the wisdom” - Moore struggles with the way that we, collectively fail.  Thanks to technology, humans can do almost anything. Yet we choose to do almost nothing about the most imminent threats facing humanity — or even our individual happiness and wellbeing. In these images, Moore tries to preserve and celebrate the thing that can and will sustain us, asking us to meditate on and protect the environment around us.

Edition details for the images in But For The Wisdom are as follows:

C-type on Fuji Flex
Very Large up to 155 x 125 cm - edition of 3 £4500 + VAT
Large up to 125 x 105 cm - edition of 5 £3500 + VAT
Medium up to 112 x 90 cm - edition of 8 £2700 + VAT
Small up to up to 68 x 54 cm - edition of 10 £1500 + VAT

Email Carrie for more information and availability.
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Casey Moore is a British-based photographer with a focus on the natural world. 

Born in Invercargill, New Zealand, but raised from the age of three in Switzerland and later London, Moore’s work explores narratives tied to the natural world, pattern and connectivity. It is because of this broad cultural perspective that Moore searches for a universal aesthetic.

This narrative is present across all of Moore’s work. Each composition - whether shot in the wilds of New Zealand, the Austrian Alps, or the rolling hills of the UK - is positioned with a careful, and exacting consideration of place. Through his lens, the photographer extracts pinpoint detail to build images bursting with the weight of their parts. Just as eighteenth and nineteenth century painters searched for the sublime, as did so many of the pioneering photographers like Carlton Watkins and Ansel Adams, Moore’s compositions capture the epic enormity of nature with a precision that is almost surreal and in turn, create a sense of the sublime that is unparalleled. 

I've always been drawn to looking at the world through a lens. It's like visiting another dimension. I feel that childlike fascination every time I look through my camera. By making my prints by hand as large as possible, I want to reconnect with that child in me that saw wonder everywhere. Quantum physics tells us that at the level of energy everything is connected, and I explore this through my photographs, making a bridge between the empirical and spiritual. Through enlarging and bringing to life the world up close, I can see that everything at one level or another, is linked.  - Casey Moore

Educated at Edinburgh University with a Masters in Psychology, Moore is largely self taught and prints large scale by hand in his darkroom in East Sussex, England. His strong physical connection to materials and chemistry also therefore runs through his practice. At times, Moore will use analog methods for capturing and printing his photographs, and then massages the large-scale prints by hand through chemical baths. This physicality has become integral to his work, and is reflected in the bodily experience of viewing his photographs.

Moore has exhibited internationally and his work is housed in private collections in the UK, NZ, Australia, US, Russia and Europe.  In 2021, he debuted this series at the Affordable Art Fair in London with Carrie Scott & Partners.