Roots of A Tree

The Walthamstow Wetlands is one of the largest urban nature reserves in Europe, an area of London that many have become attached to during the Covid-19 pandemic including myself. Spending a lot of time there during the first and second lockdown, I then started to see the Wetlands reserve with a new set of eyes. I started to see the human presence and the ever-present impact of human interaction on the landscape. I aim to explore the human connection to nature within an urban environment and how we manage and make nature work for us in said environment. By photographing fleeting moments of human presence I want to document and examine how we have a greater effect on nature than we sometimes realise. 

 

By photographing fleeting moments of human presence and the structures we build I aim to emphasise the space that we occupy in the outdoor area that we allocate to ourselves in an urban setting. The reason I have chosen the Wetlands is due to its geographical location sandwiched between the bustling area of Hackney and the increasingly developed area of Walthamstow. London growing like the roots of an ever incessant tree, we find ourselves having a tradeoff between the green space that we as humans crave and the housing and urban development that is needed in London as it expands.