Landed

Series of archival pigment prints exploring at an ancient English country estate before its sale.

In my series Landed we are witnessing entropy. I spent two weeks at an English country estate, one that had been home to one single family for over 700 years, and was now on the verge of sale. Transition was evident, like the upheaval in rock strata from underlying pressure. The country house had remained entirely un-photographed and out of the public eye, separated from time and largely unknown despite the lives of its once prominent family of military leaders, politicians and members of Queen Victoria’s inner circle.

Part historic country seat, part ruin, part renovation project, a home, a museum – the layers of history and the marks of human activity are subtly and suddenly revealed like strata in the bedrock curiously thrust skywards by some fault deep in the land below. The seeming charm and natural appearance of the landscape surrounding the house belies the extent of the agricultural, social and industrial actions that have been placed upon it over the centuries. Visually complex layers are revealed as this vision of extraordinary consistency plunged in to disorder as the estate entered sale.

In my series Landed we are witnessing entropy. I spent two weeks at an English country estate, one that had been home to one single family for over 700 years, and was now on the verge of sale. Transition was evident, like the upheaval in rock strata from underlying pressure. The country house had remained entirely un-photographed and out of the public eye, separated from time and largely unknown despite the lives of its once prominent family of military leaders, politicians and members of Queen Victoria’s inner circle.

Part historic country seat, part ruin, part renovation project, a home, a museum – the layers of history and the marks of human activity are subtly and suddenly revealed like strata in the bedrock curiously thrust skywards by some fault deep in the land below. The seeming charm and natural appearance of the landscape surrounding the house belies the extent of the agricultural, social and industrial actions that have been placed upon it over the centuries. Visually complex layers are revealed as this vision of extraordinary consistency plunged in to disorder as the estate entered sale.