3 Valleys looks at landscape around my home in Bath through the repeated walks I took. On these walks over the last 20 years, echoes of the past resonate through the contours of the land; different histories emerge; geological, economic, botanical, physical, and family histories. 

With each walk, these histories merge; the Celtic settlements of Solsbury Hill blending into the allotments that were once a Roman vineyard, the last time his parents were able to walk down the Woolley Road overlapping with the traces of Victorian engineering works by the banks of the River Avon. In the confines of these valleys, we leave the footprints of our present, but we also pick up those of the past. 

The result is that images are not static. Images that were once a portent of impending mortality become memento mori, a neglected patch of grass is transformed into a restorative sanctuary, an image of a valley where Jane Austen once walked becomes a visit to an fenced-in and degraded landscape.

Central to the work shown in 3 Valleys is the idea of anemoia , a nostalgia for a time or place I have never really been. These photographs are sites of anemoia.  I have walked these valleys for 20 years, but have never visited the places you see in the images you see here today.