“Dracup is well versed in the history of photography (and the history of art) and subscribes to a different conception of what the camera can do. Her pictures – photographs seems too narrowly descriptive a word for them – are not about capturing a particular moment in time but about timelessness. Her focus is less on something fleeting … and more on the long afterlife of places, plants and animals.”

– Michael Prodger

​Landmarks exhibition catalogue

Mercer Art Gallery Harrogate 2016

Liza is a landscape photographer whose work draws on the British landscape, often focusing on the distinctiveness of the woods, rivers and wildlife of West Yorkshire where she grew up. Her photos place an emphasis on the extraordinary properties of the ordinary, and reveal hidden or unseen aspects which lead to a more informed, comprehensive and enriched idea of the northern landscape and its history.

In her series Sharpe’s Wood, the images are only shot between the hours of sunset and before sunrise, which enables them to capture the very essence of photography – time and light. Since the human eye cannot see very well in the dark, Liza uses the camera to “make the invisible visible” and this becomes our tool for seeing in the dark, as the camera understands more than us about light, or the lack of it. The actual location of the woods isn’t as important – they could be any woods, anywhere in the country, and our own sense of memory will determine how we respond to the images, dependant on whether we are familiar with the location or not.

Chasing the Gloaming (2011) is a series she produced in response to the moonlit oil paintings created by legendary artist of the Victorian era, Atkinson Grimshaw. The images depict rivers, woodlands and the Yorkshire coast as places that are ethereal and otherworldly, thanks to the use of the fading light that comes just after sunset and just before dark.