Temenos (2019)

Late in 2018 I began documenting the disappearing urban landscape around the area where I was living , East London with both analog and digital cameras. I was struggling to portray the essence and fragility of wild spaces and so I began shooting with the Fujifilm Instax 210. The images held a certain melancholy, which was accentuated by using Monochrome film.  The silvery, lead grey, tonal quality and the lustre of the prints created a gentle fluidity that suited my aesthetic ideal. What was lost in sharpness and DPI was made up for with atmosphere.

When I discovered the word temenos on social media it resonated with what I had been working on and I decided to turn my lens to the wider natural landscape. The poignancy of this moment in time for our environment is hard to ignore.

Remote corners of the world have become rapidly more accessible with people risking life and limb to get the perfect selfie.

Temenos ;

• a sacred place , an area of landscape dedicated to worship or deemed to be divine

• from ancient Greek τέμενος

• Metaphorically - a space of special sanctuary, imaginative power and numinosity - Robert Macfarlane

• Jungian - a universal instinct to create a protected, safe space in which to heal, reorganise and regenerate the fragmented personality. -  jungcircle.com

This collection of prints are evidence. Each a unique document of the sacred, and the safe places that exist today in our natural world. Shot in Scotland, Italy, England and Wales, the images have been taken purposefully to be unrecognisable locations, only in that they are places of natural sanctuary.