Beneath the Surface
These images are a continuation of the ongoing work on the River Thames. My persistent obsession with walking alongside its banks is something I can't fully explain.
Making these images is very technical and ritualistic. I use a 5x4 camera with Black and White negative film. After setting up the tripod and installing the camera, I frame and focus meticulously under the dark cloth. Take light readings, adjust aperture and exposure speed and insert the film holder. While engaged in this technical process, my thoughts drift beneath the surface of what is in front of me.
I am thinking of the lives taken by the River, the discarded objects, rituals, the hidden stories the River could tell. I think about the mourning, the letting go, and suppression, the lost belongings, the ships bringing in stolen colonial goods, money, power, and poverty. Pollution. Children swimming. People drowning. Mothers crying.
The River Thames becomes a kind of archive keeper, holding on what society wants to discard, hide, forget, while its bed is lined with mud, garbage, old items, bones, notes to the dead, echoing with each tide and ebb the forgotten stories.
The pollution of the city is dumped into the same waters that made this place a city. The water is filthy. The smell is so thick. Each ebb reveals the same river bed but in a different state. I photograph the riverbed exposed by the tide going down; my photographs juxtapose movement and residue, revealing the hidden and unseen. This process becomes archaeological and forensic, exploring the river as a place multilayered with loss, history, memory, power, labour, and ritual.
