The Rule Of Three
2024
The Rule Of Three is an exploration of the Mendip Hills National Landscape, in Somerset England. Three generations connect me to this place. My Grandfather was an amateur geologist who passed his teaching down to my Dad, who in turn, after a youth spent caving in the underworld of the Mendips, passed to me. Through this landscape I have connected with an inherited life directing interest from a grandfather I did not get the chance to know.
In the South West of England lies this ancient seabed, compressed over 300 million years to become the limestone Mendip Hills. This landscape holds memories; not just of creatures pressed into the earth, but of those who have wandered through this land to leave their mark.
Retracing my family’s footsteps and entering this land to be consciously entombed for a while, allows a clarity of reflection. A connection through stone becomes an exploration of this land’s internal landscape and my own. The formations of The Mendips become markers of knowledge and discovery, with their caves becoming a space of transition and revelation.
Through this photographic interaction, The Rule Of Three seeks to visually articulate the relationship between landscape and memory, heritage and personal identity. Not just a study of place, but an inquiry into how we come to understand ourselves through the histories we inherit, and the spaces we inhabit.
Geological time is observed by the stone folds of strata. Human time is measured by memories of family. Water's time is shown through the depths it burrows in the earth.