Hallowed GROUND

In Hallowed Ground, I started with a question: have I ever truly belonged anywhere? This project came out of thinking about place, memory, and the odd disconnect I’ve always felt between where I come from and where I am.

It really began when I moved back to South East London, places like Nunhead, Deptford, and Crofton Park. My parents knew these areas well, places I’d heard about my whole life through stories. My dad was cycling to work through rain and traffic, something he’d never dreamed of doing now, and my mum was chatting with strangers on buses like they were old friends. These places were always around me in conversation, but I’d never actually lived in them. They felt familiar and foreign at the same time.

I grew up in a small countryside town that never really felt like mine. I spent most of my time imagining other lives and places. Even now, it feels like I was looking into my life from the outside.

Returning to London felt like trying to finish a sentence I’d just started. I wanted to belong here as someone passing through and trying to understand what it means to come from somewhere. I wasn’t interested in recreating my parents’ nostalgia or trying to relive their past. I just wanted to see what it felt like to walk where they once walked, to stand in those places and photograph what it meant to be there now. to fill the space between memory and imagination with something tangible. These images aren’t about resolution or closure. They’re about that quiet search for connection, feeling not quite home but getting closer.