A modern mythology: creating narrative through photographs
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I tell stories. I use metaphor and myth. I am compelled by the imagery of words as much as pictures. I want to create a modern mythology to explain the way I interact with place, the way we understand the land around us, the way we can live in these strange and disturbing times.
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Photography of Place
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I take photographs in the landscape, not of the landscape. I create narratives about place, about human interactions with the land, about our emotional responses to landscape.
I live in West Cumbria, where the hills of the Lake District decline westwards towards the sea. It is a place of weather and wide skies, of stones and bog and low hills of heather and bilberry. My photography is very firmly rooted in this landscape; I am not a travel photographer, I rarely document other places. I observe, listen, and try to understand the land. |
Photography in a time of ecological crisis
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I am stricken with the futility of making photographs at a time of ecological crisis. I care passionately about the world in which we live, and aspire to make work in a way which respects our environment and the people who live in it.
Increasingly, I have been trying to respond to environmental crisis in terms of what I photograph (landscape, environment and place), where I photograph (almost always within a walk or bike ride from my home), and how I photograph (by using caffenol as an environmentally sensitive developer; by using old repurposed photographic equipment).. |
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