I’m drawn to the landscape of the Fens. They are a place of humbling, yet mind-expanding, soaring skies and distant horizons. Their very flatness and the ruler-straight dykes, roads and power lines give them a strong and simple graphic quality. On another level they represent fecundity and the ingenuity of humankind.
Then, under heavy skies the Fens become sombre and mysterious; empty switchback roads lead to remote farms where there might be ‘something nasty in the woodshed’. The space becomes daunting, features are blurred. Ingenuity fights a continuous battle to keep the waters back – not always successfully, as in 1947, and has given humankind a pyrrhic victory over nature.
Photos: River Cam near Bottisham Lock, January 2017