The East England Fens
The modern landscape is shaped more by man than by nature. Intensive farming, power lines, global economic and transport systems are supplanting traditional agriculture and rural life around the world. Tensions between urban priorities and rural traditions run deep, and there is no going back to a bucolic rural past. But if we are to live with these working landscapes we have to reset our aesthetic compasses and see the countryside from a new perspective.

I have lived much of my life in theCambridgeshire and Lincolnshire Fens and am trying to capture some of what this means by documenting theEast England Fens – an ongoing project that has resulted in a series of exhibitions. One of the things that bind me to this open countryside is the fact that it is both artificial – a man-made working landscape – yet constantly changing with the weather, seasons and crops.

The visual impact is dramatic rather than picturesque. A very special combination of wide, open skies and straight lines receding in an infinite perspective. A land segmented by raised banks and dikes, tamed rivers and roads, sliced with geometric precision through what were once wild marshes and desolate shallow meres.