Mark O’Halleron

‘Still Waters’ combines photography and text to explore the threats posed to the coastline and rivers resulting from our failure to deal with raw sewage.

Using the location of CSOs (Combined Sewer Overflows) in my home county of Sussex, I spent several months visiting and photographing these CSO sites to raise awareness of their environmental impact.

'Anchoring Ground' considers the source of our emotions in the landscape: The ripple of bliss one might perceive when walking through a field but which subsides when you reach the other side, or an unannounced melancholic moment when simply walking down the street; do these belong to us or the land? Are they vibrations, memories of past events: a bout of lovemaking, a child playing, or last sightings - episodes which have left their own inscription.
For the work I traced the route of Teville Stream in Worthing. It's a waterway which dates back to the Bronze Age and around which trade and residential hubs grew; yet now the stream is almost entirely subterranean.

'The In Between' is a littoral study rooted in solitude - a sense of disengagement which can, when embraced, invite repose and lead to periods of introspection which themselves reward with lucidity, renewed humility, and a profound reconnection with our habitats.
The work - a combination of cyanotype and solargraph - is inspired by solo coastal walks during such a period. It offers a glimpse of our primordial oceans - hidden kingdoms - through found creatures washed ashore and rendered in digital-negative cyanotypes, These are complemented by pinhole solargraph 'maps' which documented each of these walks.