Longevity: Changing Boundaries

This series represents the ongoing and historical destruction of the natural environment by humans. These trees are all along the boundaries of farm-land and have been used to attach metal fencing components to mark those boundaries. The tree bear the scars of years, even decades of growth with the manufactured metal components being incorporated into them.

There are very few, if any, areas of the UK where the landscape has not been impacted by the actions of people. The history of this goes back hundreds, even thousands of years and is most commonly associated with the conversion of land use to that of agriculture.

Many of the areas of beauty where people walk for pleasure in the UK are actually recovering post-industrial landscapes that were often very polluted. In my local area the river has far higher levels of biodiversity than it did even 50 years ago as the mills, and other industrial activity along its banks has now gone. Even the fields and grazing areas were the sites of quarries, mining and lime kilns 100 years ago.

If you look closely enough the evidence of the past shows through and makes a lie of the rose-tinted view of the post-war era of the UK as some kind of verdant paradise.