Stephen Segasby

The Fens

As predominantly a Landscape photographer I seek to engage in the changing face of the planet in many forms, the man altered landscape intrigues me as we enter a period of massive social change and migration. I seek to find answers to questions about the future looking deeper, beyond the aesthetic, the historic or the present to ask questions about future landscapes and how they will change post increasing globalisation and technological revolution.

Having learnt the dark arts of darkroom practise in my teens I have always had an affinity with the physical process of producing the raw material of an image. From pressing the shutter; to developing the negative; to printing the positive print, I have always found the connection to the images much more satisfying and soulful. I enjoy the physicality of analogue processes and the ‘sculpting’ of a finished ‘photograph’.

These images are part of a larger body of new work around an area of rural England known as the Fens. Drained since Roman times, much of it is below sea level, improved and expanded many times since, this most fertile agricultural area has predominantly been an area of prosperity and wealth. As the economic effects of technology, global imports and financial restrictions of government subsidy increase rural communities dwindle and disappear, an air of abandonment, loneliness and fatigue remains.

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