Thoughts on sea level rise

Growing up near the sleepy Suffolk seaside, I perhaps took the sea for granted. Paddling in it, sailing on it, gazing at it and thinking my first existential thoughts.

Years later I was chatting to Spaniards in landlocked Seville, and I was amazed that some of them had never seen the sea before. I tried to describe it — impossible.

On the Greenwich Peninsula I hear mermaids. They are struggling in plastic pollution; they come to warn us about the rising waters.

The seas may be biting back, but I find hope for the future, in examples such as the algal blooms that sprung up in the ocean as a result of the ash falling from Australian wild fires. These blooms partially captured the carbon dioxide released from the fires. 

I followed a minke whale down the Thames with my camera from Woolwich to Battersea. I didn't get the shot, and the whale didn't survive.

As I splosh around with my wet process photography in the darkroom, I am harnessing some of that watery magic in my trays.

Water has a flow to it that straddles time and space. It is infinitely malleable; my ideas flow directly onto the paper. pH value and temperature control are crucial, as in our oceans. I have no such bond with digital prints.