Landmarked

My personal photographic practice is primarily based around the landscape of the South West. My work has been published and exhibited nationally in the Landscape Photographer of the Year awards, and in 2009 was featured in the What Haunt’s You? exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery in London.

Landmarked is an ongoing body of work concerned with the relationship between culture and the landscape. Cornwall is an ancient land, peppered with neolithic monuments and burial sites that provide evidence of over 5,000 years of human habitation. Today many of these monuments and sacred sites are anachronistic curiosities, situated in a post-industrial landscape of abandoned mine houses, china clay workings, industrial estates and new housing developments. Many however, retain a seemingly timeless appeal, attracting thousands of tourists every year and the continued attention of pagan and new-age devotees for whom these sites have a spiritual significance.

Despite suggestions that we live in a secular age, it would seem that sacred beliefs continue to exert a powerful influence on modern social life and our sense of connection with the landscape. Whilst I don't personally subscribe to these spiritual beliefs and practices, the beauty and atmosphere of these unique places continues to interest me.

The images in the series were produced by combining a number of exposures taken on medium format negative film, the individual images being scanned, digitally edited and stitched into panoramas.

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The writer John Timpson referred to Roche Rock as "waiting, glowering down on the Cornish countryside, for the next legend to come along". Roche Rock is a historical fragment, a sacred site since Neolithic times, Christianised in the medieval period, it now stands amongst china clay workings and new housing developments.

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The writer John Timpson referred to Roche Rock as "waiting, glowering down on the Cornish countryside, for the next legend to come along". Roche Rock is a historical fragment, a sacred site since Neolithic times, Christianised in the medieval period, it now stands amongst china clay workings and new housing developments.

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St Nectan’s Glen in North Cornwall has been a sacred site since ancient times. The carvings found in the Valley, are believed to date from 1500 – 1800 BC. In the 6th Century AD, the Christian Saint St Nectan built a hermitage beside the waterfall, apparently giving the glen it’s name. Over the centuries the glen became sacred to the Pagan community who visited the site to place ‘Clooties’, strips of ribbon or cloth, in the surrounding trees.

Today the site has become a popular destination for tourists and holiday-makers, attracting over 10,000 visitors a year. The walls of the glen have become festooned with jewelry, crystals, photographs, inscriptions, prayers and letters to departed loved ones and pets. Some create ‘fairy stacks’, piles of flat stones gathered from the river bed.

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St Nectan’s Glen in North Cornwall has been a sacred site since ancient times. The carvings found in the Valley, are believed to date from 1500 – 1800 BC. In the 6th Century AD, the Christian Saint St Nectan built a hermitage beside the waterfall, apparently giving the glen it’s name. Over the centuries the glen became sacred to the Pagan community who visited the site to place ‘Clooties’, strips of ribbon or cloth, in the surrounding trees.

Today the site has become a popular destination for tourists and holiday-makers, attracting over 10,000 visitors a year. The walls of the glen have become festooned with jewelry, crystals, photographs, inscriptions, prayers and letters to departed loved ones and pets. Some create ‘fairy stacks’, piles of flat stones gathered from the river bed.

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