Fog at Hillingdon by David K. Langdon (review)

Fog at Hillingdon is David K. Langford’s second book with Texas A&M University Press after the masterful Hillingdon Ranch: Four Seasons, Six Generations (2013). That great and dense book, coauthored with writer Lorie Woodward Cantu, documents a year at Langford’s 13,000-acre family ranch on the southern edge of the Texas Great Plains. With Langford’s photographs and Cantu’s writing, Hillingdon Ranch: Four Seasons, Six Generations provides the reader with access to the life, work, dedication, and traditions of a ruggedly elegant Texas Hill Country ranch. The new book, Fog at Hillingdon, is like a palliative encore after a powerful concert: short, sweet, and less intense. All the pictures in this new book contain expressions of fog on Langford’s family ranch and are accompanied by a literary quotation.

Langford is a Texas nature and wildlife photographer who held the position of executive vice president of the Texas Wildlife Association for 12 years. He is a man dedicated to the health and conservation of the Texas landscape. What is it about fog that attracts him? Fog is apparently uncommon in the Texas Hill County. For a photographer, fog modulates the light, making it diff use and at times momentarily magical. Langford writes in the preface about the transitory nature and transformative quality of fog. These pictures are Langford’s meditative enjoyment of the moment of his favorite places.

In the introduction to the book, Rick Bass writes of emotional connections and meaningful memories that fog inspires. Fog, like our sense of smell, can connect us in potent and unexpected ways to our past. Fog also calls our mind to the present. Fog is moisture dancing in the air. Fog moves up and down the hills and valleys, manipulating and directing the light from above. It is here for a moment and then changes, and therefore demands our mind to be present, and in that way fog can encourage us more attentive to the moment. Fog is also like a fresh snow. It simplifies and abstracts the landscape, and reveals the forms and structures of the land.

The best pictures in Langford’s Fog at Hillingdon express with light the intimate connections of moisture with earth and sky, and the magic of the life that they create. The goal of conservation is to protect and maintain the natural environments that sustain us and our fellow creatures on earth. It is difficult and likely endless work. These pictures remind us why that work is worthwhile, and provide a transcendental moment of enjoyment.