In 2018 I started working on a long term project photographing the Somerset Levels. Once completely submerged by water, the landscape has been reclaimed and transformed over centuries into a vibrant mosaic of agricultural land and internationally renowned wetland reserves.
I am drawn to these seemingly uneventful places: the fields, drainage ditches, rivers, pastures and marshes that go unnoticed. These were the places I was drawn to as a child and the images I make are an attempt to dramatise this emotional connection to the landscape.
The Levels are under threat from severe water pollution and high levels of phosphates are causing biological harm to the waterways ecosystem. In May 2022, Natural England announced they were changing the status of all Somerset Levels Sites of Special Scientific Interest to ‘Unfavourable - Declining’, the worst status before ‘Destroyed’. All of Somerset’s main rivers are now polluted beyond legal limits and the Environment Agency plan to clean up our waterways has been moved back to 2063. I’ll be 96.
I photograph the landscape during the day and at night in a cyclical pattern. I'm optimistic during the day and anxious as the sun goes down.
A series of images from the project are selected in the Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition 165. The work is currently on show at the Museum of Gloucester.
The project has been published by Another Place Press in their Field Notes series and awarded best in show by Aedra Fine Arts in America, the work also being published in their catalogue, chosen from a selection of International artists.
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