This ongoing photographic series evolves from an interest in surfaces under stress, weathering, deterioration and decay. Dis/Integration is an exploration and exposition of the process in which distress and decay in themselves create beauty.
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| Dis/Integration Series 1-6 |
The UK's East coast, where I live and where all these images were captured, is an area where the elements are acting dramatically on the coastline and landscape.
The sea is rarely angry here, but its formidable power is still felt, as erosion gradually but inexorably eats into the land. Whole villages have disappeared, and the predicted rise in sea levels mean large areas are expected to succumb in the future. The coast is studded with man-made attempts to hold the sea at bay, but the task is futile.
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| Dis/Integration Series 7-13 |
The weather is rarely extreme here. We are sheltered from the atlantic storms which batter the western coastline. But sometimes, when the wind swings around, the weather comes straight from the arctic circle, or the winds scream across the European continent from Siberia, turning our coast into a desolate, inhospitable, but still beautiful place.
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| Dis/Integration Series 14-16 |
And with the weather comes destruction and decay. An unstoppable decomposition of the manufactured and also the natural world, a constant reminder that everything created is ultimately destroyed, that birth is the beginning of a journey with only one possible outcome, that despite the advance of civilisation and technology the power of nature remains always outside our control.
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| Dis/Integration Series 17-19 |
So, the question becomes whether we despair at our lack of ability to control our ultimate destiny or that of our creations, or accept the transience inherent in our existence and celebrate the moments we experience and the beauty within them. The Dis/Integration series is an invitation to experience every moment as fully as we are able and focus on the things we can control instead of the things we can't, in the knowledge that our time is short.
Find the complete portfolio here.
