'Views of Matlock Bath' comprises a collection of photographs of the scenic English spa town championed for its picturesque qualities by tastemakers of their times including Byron and Ruskin. '' draws upon a variety of pictorial representations from photography and painting, the valley itself being of great significance in formalising ideas of Landscape as a genre in its own right. George Miles' sublime large-format colour photographs explore how the land is used, viewed and mediated: both physically and through representations of it. The town having borne witness to the consolidation of the English landscape tradition through visiting artists on the Grand Tour, the birth of both the Industrial Revolution, and of mass tourism (the first package holiday organised by Thomas Cook in 1841). These interconnections and the relationship they bear upon how we view the landscape are explored through the sequencing of photographs within the book, setting up a dialectic tension between these opposites presents a contemplative space in which to critically reflect upon how representations of 'nature' since the Industrial Revolution have been complicit in the environmental problems we are now currently faced with. 80 colour and b/w illustrations
