Manifesto
Nature is life and life is nature. Everything that is alive, fungi, bugs, trees, fish and human beings all owe their existence to the web of life that is unique to planet Earth. Nature, the self-willed world, is our home and our life support system.
Surely we should respect, love, perhaps even worship nature? But we don’t. We tear it apart.
When I was young, I spent a lot of time outdoors. My childhood home was very close to a forest, and my family would walk for miles through the trees. My mum and dad would identify birds, reptiles and insects. In my memories, it is always a sunny day, with a lizard basking on a rock.
When I was about twelve, a motorway was driven through the forest. At the time, my boy’s imagination was fired by the sight of all those big machines at work. But when the machines moved on to the next job and the motorway was open to traffic, the forest was never the same. Roaming through the woodland was now blocked by fences and banks. The noise was deafening. Even hundreds of metres from the motorway, it was intrusive. I had a deep sense of loss. I could still walk in that forest, but it was blighted, and it was never the same again. I learned that the joy of nature could be taken away or degraded, and other people would think this was a good thing. This chilling observation stayed with me for the rest of my life.
So I became drawn to objecting and protesting, to pushing back on environmental and social issues that seemed unfair to me. This activity got me noticed, and I was asked to stand for a district councillor seat in 2007. I was successful.
Did being an elected councillor suddenly give me access to the ability to bring about change? Quite the opposite. Local government is bogged down in party allegiances, standing orders, procrastination and obstruction. When I lost my seat in 2011, I was quite relieved. A second big lesson: politics is more concerned with preventing change than delivering it.
Hopefully now wiser, I thought hard about what really matters to me. My family are very important, and I want the very best for all of them, both now and in the future. But the future cannot be taken for granted. My memories of nature being sacrificed for tarmac merged with the growing clamour about the state of the natural world and the increasing instability of the climate. Commentators talk about a world that will be very different and more hostile by 2100. That’s not an abstract, far-off date; my grandchildren will be in their 80s then. That’s a single lifetime.
I realised that change comes from below. It comes from people who are not invested in the status quo, who are free to consider all the possibilities and advocate for the best way forward. Artists, as people who work with ideas, are uniquely placed to be changemakers.
So this is my path. To use my abilities as a photographer and a writer to speak about the things that concern me. To put nature first. To call out the madness of putting profit before planet. To make clear how the planet, in all its diversity and complexity, provides us with life and health. To point to the bad things that are happening and call them bad. To say that excessive consumption makes us all poorer in every way. To bring others with me. To work with the people who are telling a different and truthful story about how we should live.
Through my work, I want to get people questioning and talking, realising that unless we reclaim our relationship with nature, the future is very gloomy indeed. The hubris, vanity, greed and hatred that characterise how we live today are killing us. I don’t want that, I want life. I am for nature, for energy, for change and for life. I am for the future.