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.