Trent ( in progress )
Outside of the creeping commodification of the English landscape, the river Trent is persistent with its authenticity. It Carries a nature, a character and personality of its own, ignoring the increasingly bought landscape that too ignores it.
Etymologically, the word Trent means to ‘trespass’ ‘wander’ or ‘travel’, all of these words seems appropriate, but words mean little unless attached to experience. I enjoy experiencing the Trent, frequenting it’s course at different points. I have got familiar with the river, revisiting it often, and with that, its presence seems to have woven itself within my own personal psyche of home.
The Trent is a major river, the third largest river in England, But here, in its infancy, it moves slowly, travelling through the complicated and often obstructing conurbation of the city that bares its name, a journey largely untold. This illogical route, wandering wildly, unnavigable mostly, provides adventure. At times, it seems exhausted, but elsewhere free flowing and majestic, tranquil, carrying the past whilst journeying through the present. It clambers, meandering over and under roads and old railway lines, drifting past industry new and old, carrying parts of the place. It is silent and unseen, apologetic almost, but its spirit of place is something to hold on to, to keep moving.
I continue to be lured by the river. It’s certain permanence, but continual change, never the same. The photographs are a record of this experience, the river, the often austere landscape it navigates and the stories it carries with it. This is nature. Local nature, unremarkable and yet undefinable. Perhaps a visual metaphor for the wanderer, the photographer.
Photographs