John Davies’s landscape photographs in his 1987 book A Green and Pleasant Land show British towns in their geographic context. By choosing elevated viewpoints, Davies makes photographs that reveal the topography, land uses, and evolution of building. Almost map-like, you can identify the landform, the river and the reasons for the industry, the streets of housing, the sports pitches.

He does it with extraordinary skill of selecting a location, composition and waiting for the light. They are superlative landscape photographs, but uniquely, Davies’s photography provides the urban legibility that is sometimes lacking when planners explain the shape of towns, the impact on nature, the strategy for regeneration. These are different from generic ‘urban photographs’, which typically are streets, spaces and buildings within the town, selected in a way that obscures the wider context. Davies’s photographs are the other way round – all context, within which you can identify specific streets, buildings and spaces.

John Davies is explicit and open; not mysterious. Some other urban landscape photographers let the photographs ‘speak for themselves’, sometimes leaving us confused about what we are looking at. Davies on the other hand writes a precise title of where the picture is; a short account of what the photograph shows; and sometimes gives the causes for change shown in the picture. Such as, Bridgewater Canal, Manchester, 1984, where he says in the caption that the Manchester to Liverpool Railway, opened in 1830, overlooks the Bridgewater Canal. The canal served as a transport link between Manchester and Runcorn in the early 1770’s. This canal area is being redeveloped and plans are being made to convert the canal warehouse for recreational use. What this does is prompt our looking – this is not just a railway and a canal, it is a history of connection, industrial investment, economic flux and a current process of regeneration and change of use.

His approach in A Green and Pleasant Land favours towns in upland geography, as this allows a raised viewpoint. To photograph lowland towns within plains is harder. But these are entirely different from aerial photographs. Somehow they are special because where the photograph is taken from is integral to the whole photograph. As an education about the shape and detail of a town they are better than a map.

Topography is about land form; natural and ‘man-made’. Geomorphology explains the landform, modified by enclosure, planting and agriculture; urban morphology explains the settlement shapes. This is John Davies’s topographic photography. It was new before the American New Topographics movement. Perhaps it was an influence, but the objectivity of the New Topographics was full of angst and alienation; never about revelation and explanation. The objectivity of Davies is all about curiosity and wonder. These are the photographs that reveal or replace the 1000 words explaining these towns.

Each photograph could be printed very big. Every question a child would ask – what is that? Or why is this there? – can be answered by the photograph itself; whether it is about a factory or waste heap, or about a bend in the road, or a shed in a back garden.

In his 1992 book Cross Currents, Davies has more photographs taken from ground level or slightly raised viewpoints. More presence within spaces in the city. Even when the pictorial scope is smaller, Davies shows ‘whole things’ in context – a square with identifiable adjacent buildings. A bridge under construction surrounded by a river and natural parkland.

He can make the photographs provide information about places because he waits for the light to be as revealing as possible. There is a vibrant three-dimensions to every picture, nothing is shrouded in shadow, the depth of field is comprehensive, the printing immaculate. But another important thing we can forget when looking – they are black and white photographs. This also reveals form in a way that colour photographs cannot always do, with the distraction of reds and greens, adverts and petrol station signs – all of which are in his photos but don’t claim undue attention.

Nearly every town or part of town is surrounded by space and sky – it means that with each photograph we start to understand a place from its edge definition, not from the central square or town hall or factory gates. That edge might be gardens or allotments enclosed by fences and old doors; or a river or canal side with flood defences, or bridges; or a railway or relief road. There are six photographs of the Rhymney Valley in South Wales – all with a vast edge of valley and sky, together conveying the form and significance of mining and settlement in this extensive valley.

His book Green and Pleasant Land has photographs of industrial towns at the time of the miners strike and shifts in manufacturing and heavy industry. His book Cross Currents has photographs of cities across Europe before Euroscepticism and before the Berlin Wall came down. So always, the moment in history is part of the understanding of the photographs; whether we see dereliction or development.

It seems particularly irreverent to include poor reproductions of Davies’s photographs here, but instead appropriate as an illustration of his approach to give some of his captions from Green and Pleasant Land. From his precise factual captioning, Davies is happy to optimise an educational value in viewing his pictures.

TOWARDS FOCHRIW RHYMNEY VALLEY, MID GLAMORGAN, 1984

At the ‘Heads of the Valley’, Fochriw’s colliery was the only source of employment for this isolated moorland village. The signs of mining activity disappeared through reclamation schemes in the later 1970s.

ALLOTMENTS OVERLOOKING EASINGTON COUNTY DURHAM, 1983

Before the coal industry was nationalised in the 1940s many mining villages, like Easington, were built without gardens. The hillier areas around Easington were turned into allotments.

VICTORIA PROMENADE WIDNES, CHESHIRE, 1986

On the mouth of the Mersey Estuary, Widnes rapidly became a centre for chemical industries after alkali works were established in the 1950s. Beyond Widnes is the Fiddlers Ferry coal-fired power station which also lies on the estuary.

Green and Pleasant Land, Photographs by John Davies, 1987, Cornerhouse Publications

Cross Currents, John Davies, 1992, Ffotogallery in association with Cornerhouse Publications