forsaken is a collection of images of abandoned houses at once frozen in the moment they were deserted and yet witness to the passing of time as the years of neglect reshape and reform their structures. Decay etches its patina on the fabric of the building. The images capture the compelling intersection of time and place, presence and absence. A melody plays out, each moment, each note, echoes with the notes that have gone before and the ones to come. Here these anticipated notes hang in the air like dust before falling to the ground, disappearing in the layers of time’s silt, dust in the wind. Emanating from the images is an unsettling sense of impermanence. These buildings, once homes and safe havens, were erected as assurances of permanence representing generations of existence. Now all that is left is personality of decoration and the functional items of domesticity. The camera sees not what is present but what is absent; the presence of absence highlighted by what remains. And yet a quiet beauty slips in by the broken back door, a sweet melancholy of the inevitable cycle of growth and decay. The boundary between the interior and exterior once so protected blurs as the outside breaks in. The images confront us with our own temporality, remind us that one day we, too, will be dust.

This collection documents places found on the back roads and quiet lanes of Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion. The scenes are just as I found them, there is no manipulation for the shot. The title ‘forsaken’ implies a greater finality than abandonment, its religious connotations hinting at a place where the veil between the material and the spiritual wears thin and a mysterious process transforms things into something else. The collection forms part of an ongoing project recording unique character of West Wales. The Wales I arrived at aged seven, the personality of place so much a part of the land and the people, which is slowly dissolving.