Bastard Countryside

Bastard Countryside is a long-term body of work made over fifteen years, exploring the hybrid margins of the British landscape — places where urban and rural, natural and man-made, collide and merge. The title borrows from Victor Hugo’s idea of a “bastard countryside”: terrain formed from two conflicting natures, neither wholly pastoral nor fully industrial.

The photographs move through spaces where familiar ideas of the countryside begin to fray — interrupted by infrastructure, decay, dereliction, and the everyday residue of human activity. Rather than framing these places as simply damaged or picturesque, the work lingers in their ambiguity, where beauty and unease sit side by side.

Published as a monograph by Loose Joints with an essay by Robert Macfarlane, Bastard Countryside considers landscape as something shaped, inhabited, and inherited — a place where labour, neglect, and time accumulate. The work asks what we choose to build, what we abandon, and what remains long after we’ve moved on.

The book is currently sold out. A reprint is being considered — sign up to the mailing list for updates.