13 miles

13 Miles is a photographic exploration of the landscape closest to home, made within a radius of thirteen miles (21 km) around the house where I live. I did not choose that boundary; I discovered it. Growing up in the countryside, I cycled out on my own as a teenager, each time a little further: far enough to be free, close enough to be home the same day. Nobody knew where I was. I could get lost, and I decided for myself when to turn back. Only now, retracing those roads, have I found that this radius measured about thirteen miles.

Today I return to the same roads, fields, woodland edges and overlooked places, without a predetermined route or specific subjects. I am not searching for remarkable locations, but for what reveals itself through familiarity and repetition. The land has changed since then, but the photographs are not a record of that change. They make a memory visible: the freedom of a teenager who was briefly out of reach.

People rarely appear in these photographs, yet they are never entirely gone. Their presence lingers in worn paths, in objects left behind, in places that seem to hold the memory of those who passed through them. What is absent becomes as significant as what is visible.

My sons are teenagers now. Screens, location sharing and constant connectivity are an everyday part of how they explore the world. Their world has no radius, everything is equally near, and they are never out of reach. I do not see this as a loss; it is a different freedom, and I honestly do not know which is better. 13 Miles brings their way of exploring and mine into the same space and asks what a boundary does to freedom.

The thirteen-mile boundary is therefore both practical and psychological. By staying close to home, I discover that distance is not only measured in kilometres, but in memory, attachment and time. Together, the photographs form a portrait of a familiar territory that keeps revealing itself, and of a freedom that once had an edge.

Interactive installation

13 Miles will be presented as an interactive installation: a wooden box of 20 x 20 cm from which 49 photographs unfold in four directions. Visitors decide for themselves which direction to open and which to leave closed, and how far to go. A scale prototype has been made. More information will follow via https://13-miles.com/