The Lost River is a series of direct positive paper negatives which have travelled downstream with me, we have canoed over the flooded river banks and waded through the newly formed estuaries. They have got stuck in the mudflats and been splashed by the passing motorboats. As I carry my camera and paper into these places I am looking for something lost, my grandfather, these are the spaces that he introduced me too. And I fear, that as I lost my grandfather I will also loose these spaces.
It is these spaces that I as a child learnt how to embrace my natural surroundings, I learnt how to play with my stick as a rifle, to join the swallows and amazons, but, I worry that today the children are not given have these opportunities. That they aren’t becoming adventurers in these places, that they will not learn how to have fun away from the back lit screens of our digital age. And if we do not know what to do with those broken trees and how to look at those flying birds then they will not know why we need these spaces.
It is these spaces that I as a child learnt how to embrace my natural surroundings, I learnt how to play with my stick as a rifle, to join the swallows and amazons, but, I worry that today the children are not given have these opportunities. That they aren’t becoming adventurers in these places, that they will not learn how to have fun away from the back lit screens of our digital age. And if we do not know what to do with those broken trees and how to look at those flying birds then they will not know why we need these spaces.
Initial statement;
As a brief premature statement this project 'The Kentish River Stour' is born from my childhood, as the river was my playground. Now with a focused visual approach I aim to retrace the winding path through our countryside researching and photographing its rich history.
This website will serve as my on-going academic journal and is an in-sight into my development and project progression both in photographing the river and my thought processes both theoretically and practically.