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Strange Eden
2021 – Ongoing
These photographs were made in Bickershaw, a nature reserve bordered by residential areas and located on the site of a former coal mine in Wigan, Greater Manchester.
Across this landscape, remnants of industrial adventure remain like a fresh scar pressing against rich and verdant stretches of woodland and wetland, now quickly resurging in the wake of human enterprise. Meanwhile, people bring competing visions to the land: some as a site where our contract with non-human nature can be redrawn and rehabilitated; others as a site for recreation, both innocent and illicit.
Nature – a phenomenon from which we cannot exclude ourselves – exists here in a state of chaos, moving unceasingly through states of decay and creation; darkness and radiance. These images made on this contested and mutable landscape describes the mystery and imperfection that lies at the heart of every Eden.
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a48321bd0013a681693d87f12c68ec161fec9e284a6fb50e7dc48f0577bdd9ea/Strange-Eden02.jpg)
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![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/59cb3539ec97f3f3c36aa5258b56aa17c2e361e66b5b007cde901049e1b3712e/Strange-Eden11.jpg)
![](https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a1139dfeaeac151322910b44d8ede3a8d1d62251e910b708b690a17ad0ec5b9e/Strange-Eden08.jpg)
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