What I Stand For Is What I Stand On.
This project is a documentation of British landscapes and the sacredness found within them. These spaces are currently under threat as only seven percent of our native woodlands are in good ecological condition. My Christian faith prompts a considered stewardship of these spaces, and this project seeks to invoke a fruitful reverence for the land we find ourselves surrounded by. I use the transcendental argument for God as my foundation, believing that God is the necessary precondition for the logic, beauty, and objective value we find in nature. If the land is a physical expression of his creativity, then my role as a photographer is to bear witness to the truth that the heavens and the earth declare his glory.
My visual approach is deeply shaped by a lineage of photographers who have interrogated our relationship with the earth. From the mastery of Ansel Adams, I have learned to use light as a form of visual worship, while Fay Godwin has shown me how to read the historical layers of the British landscape. The work of Robert Adams and the insights of Wendell Berry remind me to look honestly at the consequences of how we live on the land, acknowledging both the beauty and the scars of human involvement. Like John Blakemore, I seek the sacred in the intimate details and shifting processes of growth and decay, recognizing that every leaf is a testament to an ongoing creation.
The title of this work, What I Stand For Is What I Stand On, reflects a theology rooted in the soil. I have been profoundly influenced by Celtic Christianity and the belief in thin places where the divine and the physical meet. This ancient faith teaches me to read the book of nature almost like a holy text alongside scripture. Similarly, the writings of Robin Wall Kimmerer have taught me to see the land as a gift rather than a commodity. In the same way she describes the gift of strawberries, I view these landscapes as a manifestation of divine generosity that requires a response of gratitude and reciprocity.
My photographs do not shy away from manmade obstructions like fences or roads because stewardship must happen in the world as it is, not just in an imagined wilderness. Peter Wohlleben’s work on the hidden life of trees has taught me that the forest is a community of mutual support, This mirrors the grace I find in my own faith and reinforces my commitment to protecting these living networks. This project has been a slow and prayerful process of printing and reprinting in the darkroom. Each step is an act of pilgrimage, intended to show that the land belongs to itself and to its creator, and that our responsibility to the world is enacted on this very ground.
