John Davies image made over 100 years later bears a striking resemblance to Goodall's. as with Goodall, Davies meaning is ambiguous. It is not made clear whether the image is a celebration of mans triumph over nature or a lament for a lost rural ideal.
I suspect it is neither though viewers will project what they feel onto the image. Davies is ultimately interested in how we use land not how we should use land. In Agecroft Power Station we see a land that has been transformed. The leveled and manicured playing field dominates the for ground while the cooling towers echo windmills of a bygone era of dutch painting but instead of joining land with sky they ocupie the space where once sky was. any hint of nature that is left is pushed to the edges, trees struggle for space between road and pitch while a horse is made an uncomfortable bedfellow with the cars at the bottom of the picture.
Looking through Davies body of work it seems that the options for British landscape photographers wanting to work in a traditional way have become extremely limited. with the expansion of urban and suburban environments and the creation of designated beauty spots it seems that there is not only a lack of available subject matter for the perpetuation of the rural myth but that this vision of Arcadia has been relegated to the status of fantasy.
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