Return to Nature zine

Return to Nature

A collection of photos taken over the past 2 years all set in or around nature.

- 64 pages
- Hand signed
- Hand numbered
- All content taken on 35mm
- NSFW
- Free 6x4 photo print with the first 100 or so featuring work from the publication or the shortlist

*orders will be posted w/c 5/7*

Explanation:
The thought process behind this publication is two-fold. Firstly, it's a simple love letter to nature. I spent a fair amount of my childhood in a very small village surrounded by ancient woodland. I'd spend a lot of that time alone exploring or just simply being among the trees. No matter where I've been since I've always felt the call back to the woods, it's something primal. I feel the year of lockdown and isolation has brought this feeling to the forefront for many people who had unconsciously suppressed it in favour of city life. I've seen more people out in nature in the past year or so than I ever have before. Secondly, it's a visual philosophical study. I feel like my work is the antithesis of nature in many ways. It's egoic, hedonistic, modern, temporary and brash whereas nature is overwhelming, everlasting and endlessly beautiful with absolute humility. There's a sort of terror associated with nature's overwhelming beauty and immensity, it's more awe inducing than awe inspiring, something Kant described as the sublime. While having a debate on nature with someone online a couple of years ago, he was a young Argentinian priest, I jovially said to him that the Kantian sublime was overrated. It was just a fleeting comment but it stuck with me. I wondered if I could overwhelm the overwhelming through photography. Both giving respect to the natural sublime but also bending it and making it my own, putting it as an equal with whoever I was photographing. I guess by the end of the series, after 2 years and over 1000 photos shot, most of which feeling a lot more like my work rather than some Ansell Adams natural beauty, it left me back with the nagging question of "uh oh, maybe it actually is overrated?". I don't think I really answered that for myself fully, although I do think it's more that nature has that beautiful humility rather than it isn't overwhelming. Either way I poured my heart, soul and mind into this project and enjoyed every moment among the natural beauty pictured, be it grass powering its way through concrete or out in trees that are centuries old. I feel like my love of and draw to nature has remained as powerful throughout but my appreciation has deepened and the series has emboldened my belief that we should reconnect with the natural world around us and do everything within our power to preserve it as best we can.

Mother Nature, she is the fight.