I spent many years travelling, photographing and then manufacturing in India and saw endless extraordinary sights. Some, agonising in their beauty, others, in their horror and I can have 100% total recall at times of the oddest, most abstract moments.
But beyond the sights are the feelings, the overwhelming emotions that rose up at times, and one that I never settled with until recently was how I felt when I looked at pastoral scenes in India. Hand tilled fields, small holdings with water buffalo standing patiently, women cleaning rice in a field… All of these visions would evoke the most powerful sense of a lost connection deep inside myself, an ache of longing.
I recently moved out of London to South Croydon. I had no real sense of why but was drawn here, had to move, so followed the whim, partly to get my kids away from Peckham energy and I fell in love with a house here. Many months and much stress later we moved in and that powerful emotion, the same one triggered by the Indian pastoral visions came back, every time I went out in the woods, fields, valley and garden here.
I have come to realise that the power of green over me, and I guess us all, is extraordinary. It hits me each time, as though it is water for my thirsty soul and I love it.
So I present, here, a series of images that I have taken during walks in green, whether spring, summer, autumn or winter’ the effect upon me is the same….
