3Days|2Nights

3Days|2Nights is my most ambitious project to date.  Few people know that Britain was once a rainforest nation. 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, temperate rainforest covered as much as a fifth of the UK.

There are not many places on the planet where these rainforests can flourish. It has to be wet, with about 1,400mm of rain a year, and mild enough for plants to grow in mid-air. The UK’s West coast offers the perfect environment; we have, apparently, the best temperate rainforests in all of Europe.

3Days|2Nights will be a body of work made in the last fragments of these majestic temperate forests. In Into the Forest, the world’s foremost expert on forest bathing, Dr Qing Li shows that after extensive physiological testing, exposure to a forest environment for two hours (ideally more) is beneficial mentally and physically.  After four to six hours’ exposure our immune functions are boosted for one week and after 3 days|2 nights changes occur on a cellular level that boost our immune functions for up to 30 days.

My guiding methodological approach in making 3 days|2 nights will be that all of the images have to be made in ancient UK rainforests and that the film exposure times will align with Professor Qing Li’s research. Using an analogue 5×4 camera exposure times will be minimally 2 hours long. The final collection will add up to a combined exposure time of 3 days|2 nights.

To leave the shutter open for such long periods of time will mean giving in to what the forests and the elements offer up. Ordinarily a photograph freezes a second in time but this way of making work will be more immersive, literally bathing the analogue film sheets in the environment for two hours to absorb the majestic presence of the old- growth forests.

For the first time I will be experimenting with pairing sound with binaural sounds recorded within the forests.  The audio will offer an immersive experience and will also offer opportunities to explore new ways of making work converting sound into imagery.

3Days|2Nights will offer an opportunity to become immersed into a sublime realm outside of the everyday. It will be an invitation to sit in a space which is so much larger and older than ourselves – to reflect, to breathe and to heal wherever you maybe.