Toby Devenson - West of the sun

“But what is there, west of the sun?” I asked.
She shook her head again. “I don’t know. Maybe nothing.
Or maybe something.”
These two lines from Haruki Murakami’s 1992 novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, gave birth to a concept that has come to represent my landscape photography and the way in which I work.
In ‘West of the Sun’, I had found a perfect description of a state of mind into which I try to enter when I work. As if forever seeking that “perfect” image, found just over the horizon and to the West of the Sun.

Description of artist
Toby has been taking black and white photographs since 1989, always using an old Nikkormat and the same 24mm lens he ‘borrowed’ from his father over twenty years ago. His images are never cropped, but are framed instinctively at the time of taking. Toby has an ability to depict the world that goes beyond the literal representation that we have come to expect from photography. His landscapes are suggestive of myths, with something beyond their four corners, challenging the viewer to see the world, and the medium, in a different way.