Essay from the Moor and Dale catalogue: "Among all the places we go to but don' t look at properly or which leave us indifferent, a few occasionally stand out with an impact that overwhelms us and forces us to take heed. They possess a quality that might clumsily be called beauty." Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. Yet, beauty can be fleeting. It can be a result of the right season, the right weather and the right light. It can even be the result of being in the right place at the right time. How then do we capture beauty? For photographer Tessa Bunney, the camera provides one option. In the eastern foothills of the Pennines in North Yorkshire there is an area of 'outstanding natural beauty'. Mapped out by three rivers and defined by grouse moorland, heather covered bog and dry heath, this is 'a community in a state of unprecedented change'. As an outsider, Tessa Bunney was commissioned to investigate and record, with an impartial view and an eye for interpretation, the people and culture within six hundred and thirty three square kilometres of Nidderdale. Colour plays a large part in Bunney's images. Cobalt blue skies with cumulus clouds; glimpses of vibrant red; hints of monochrome in the eggs of lapwings and mallards, all bring seemingly banal moments to our attention. By homing in on details - the macro close up of blue twine spilling from a Barbour jacket; a handful of heather seeds; a sprig of whisker like bog cotton, gently blowing in the wind, our eyes are being drawn to the unseen in such a way that makes us look again, that makes us look properly at a way of life that should not go unnoticed. Portraits are presented in an unconventional manner. Often we do not see the person, faces are hidden tantalisingly out of the frame. Symmetry and proportion have been distorted. Foregrounds dominate - flat caps, that quintessential Yorkshire accessory; sheep, pheasant and other animals; a curve of freshly cut turf - all take centre stage through their prominence within the photographs. Backgrounds are purposely out of focus - rustic vistas are rendered immaterial and secondary to the real drama. These photographic devices bring a depth to Moor and Dale that goes beyond the visual clichés and romantic notions of the landscape. In Bunney's world nostalgia plays no part. This is a place of unbounded sprawl where memories, dreams, anxieties and worries are all played out for us to see. She has photographed a visual social landscape with a particular economy, where a special relationship between its people and its wildlife is crucial. In a striking and endearing body of work, Bunney has rendered visible human traces and indelible marks of custom. Moor and Dale is an illuminating set of colourful photographic portraits and landscapes that is at turns bright, yet foreboding; tender yet unsentimental; tense yet affectionate. It has indeed captured that quality 'that might clumsily be called beauty.' Anne McNeill Director, Impressions Gallery, York.