Digital Camera World - UK (2021-03)

136 DIGITAL CAMERA^ MARCH 2021 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com

a very simple setup. The process took a long time –

I wandered along particular stretches, sometimes

for days at a time without any subject matter

materialising. Most of the time I was wandering

around, thinking my own thoughts and taking one or

two pictures, but occasionally I would come across

something of interest or spoke to someone who

directed my attention towards something relevant.

Some of the rituals I was trying to photograph only

happened once a year. Occasionally I found out about

about a particular event just after it had happened, so

then had to to wait for a year to photograph it. So it

did actually become quite a protracted process. But

gradually, things began to take shape, and five years

after starting, I had enough material to make a book.

Did you start work on the book straight away?

No, I put the Thames work aside for a couple

of years, and didn’t look at it. This was a great

opportunity to get some distance from the work, so

that when I finally returned to look at it, I felt much

less pressure about how I was going to organise it.

This is the most experimental book I’ve made:

pictures flow over the pages, and you’re often

presented with half an image. I’m trying to do

something new with the work, trying to create

something that, as a whole, is stronger than its

constituent parts. I’m pretty sure that had I done

the book straight after I’d shot the work, I would

have resisted doing it this way. Sequencing and

designing the book with my publisher has been

a really creative and exciting process.

Had you considered using this kind of layout

design for the book before you sat down to do it?

No. I realised quite quickly that a series of images of

the river would work well as a book, although it was

only later on that I started thinking about the form

that book could take – the sense of moving from

front to back, a singular direction that echoes

the linear flow of a river, beginning somewhere

and ending somewhere else.

I started to think that having taken a lot of

photographs about people’s individual relationship

with the water, I still wanted to capture the material

nature of the water itself, to try to use the book design

to conjure something of that liquidity and movement,

even a sense of time passing. That’s why there are

a lot of mini-sequences within the book where you

see three pictures taken in very quick succession

• although they’re still images, in sequence,
  they add up to a kind of animation effect.
  From a design point of view, every book I’ve
  published has a different approach, and one
  that fits its subject; I always think deeply about
  how best to communicate a project in book form.

You photographed quite a range of characters

for Thames Log. What were the most memorable

encounters you had while producing the work?

INTERVIEW

Right: Redsands Sea

Forts Restoration,

Thames Estuary, 2015.

Opposite top: Mass

baptism, Southend-

on-Sea, 2013.

Opposite bottom: Blessing

of the River, London

Bridge, 2012.

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