Wild
DESCRIPTION
A collection of intimate landscapes and portraits of nature made over the course of a decade walking in the countryside around my home in rural north Dorset.
My work explores themes of belonging, connection, loss, and hope in both my personal life and in the wider ecology of the landscape and climate. I came to photography, many years ago as a conservationist, recording species and habitats. As it has for many others, photography became a meditative practice that has cast light in dark places and brought stillness in the chaos and fast pace of the modern world. It has become an act of quiet rebellion in a relentlessly busy world.
My photography is taken in the local woodlands, wood pastures, chalk downland, heaths, and pockets of wasteland. I have walked the same paths through these Thin Places repeatedly, encountering the denizens of the wild with child like wonder. Watching the changes as the seasons turn feeling joy at each new encounter, but also the deep sorrow when a voice disappears from the natural chorus.
The land I walk is etched with the marks of long gone cultures, and the echoes of the original wisdom of people whose lives were lived much closer to nature. Photography anchors me in the present moment, but my vision while looking through the view finder embraces the deep past whilst also looking to the future. I also draw inspiration from local folk lore and the rich colours and artistic style of the illustrators of my childhood faerie tale books have been a great influence.
The essence of my work is to try to amplify the voices of the wild, whose language, one which is older than words, we no longer seem able to hear.