The River Continues to Flow

‘The River Continues to Flow’ is an ongoing photography project that combines landscape imagery and portraiture to represent the varied nature of a unique stretch of river and woodland on the outskirts of Bristol, UK and its connections with those who pass through it.

The area has undergone numerous and drastic physical changes over the past few hundred years and today the place is wild and tangled, but accessible to all, marking it out as an increasingly rare urban space where one is completely free to roam and explore. I have observed that it regularly takes on a metaphysical change as people visit and mould it to fit their purpose in that moment. For example, one evening I met Sham staring soulfully down the river and he explained that he and his brothers come to this peaceful spot to remember their home. “Often we are here but our minds are somewhere else”. On another occasion, Ros, a playwright, and frequent visitor to the area, told me that the river “fuelled” her writing. She mused that being by the river, had made her realise that water is the common element in all her work. I believe the metaphysical change extends into a mirroring effect between human visitors and nature. This thought recalls author George B. Moore’s reflection that, “…we watch the landscape for signs that might tell us something more of the something less we sense inside”. I frequently came across examples of nature that appeared to imitate a person’s emotional response to the space and vice versa and I have documented them within this body of work.