Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton] 
Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton] 
Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton] 
Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton] 
Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton] 
Lesley Punton, from the Midwinter series, 2025, digital c-type prints. [Photo credit: Lesley Punton]
Since 2020, I have been periodically returning to and making work in the Black Wood of Rannoch. The Black Wood of Rannoch is one of the oldest and largest remnants of the native pinewoods remaining in Scotland – the great wood of Caledon. Continuous tree cover has been present in these woods for over ten thousand years, and this is one of the very few woods in Scotland where none of the trees have been planted by humans, instead having seeded and grown naturally. It’s home to indigenous varieties of Scots pine that grow only here.
I have been interested in making images in the Black Wood on the shortest day (21st Dec), chasing fragile light on these trees at the turning point of the year. These images, photographed in December 2024 are part of this larger body of work.
Peter Davidson, The Last of the Light – About Twilight (2015), London: Reaktion Books
Christoph Ransmayr, The Terrors of Ice and Darkness (1984), Vienna & London (Christian Brandstätter, English Translation 1991): Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Christiane Ritter, A Woman in the Polar Night (1938), Berlin: Ullstein A.G., (Translated 1954, London: Allen & Unwin)
Reading Landscape 