SEASCAPES

The exploration of my relationship with forest landscapes has always been a central theme of my photographic practice; how it formed, evolved, and continues to change.

- ELLIE DAVIES

I have considered our contemporary and collective sense of alienation from the natural world, the theoretical perceptions of beauty and the sublime, and the commodification of landscape as a leisure facility and resource. My work reflects on how our personal experiences of, and interactions with, landscape are shaped by the wider cultural perceptions of forests, which come to us through the colored prisms of storytelling and mythology, literature, fine art, and the more contemporary narratives of climate change.

ELLIE DAVIES

SEASCAPES, 2020

Seascapes is a meditation on climate change; rising sea levels and frequent extreme weather events have to lead to more serious flooding worldwide.

In the winter of 2019/2020, the New Forest in the South of England, where I grew up and make most of my work, experienced a succession of storms that generated extensive winter-long flooding.

These images are imagined scenes about a potential future where water flows over the woodlands, and flooding becomes a permanent landscape feature.

I wanted the series to speak about change, loss of control, and the unknown. In some images, the water that flows across dusk-darkened woodlands is ruptured by roiling currents rushing inland. In others, the forest is virtually obscured by bubbling water. However alluring, this sparkling insurgency is altogether darker and more dangerous; reflected light captured from the sea's surface now appears in forest spaces where it was never meant to be.