About Metamorphosis

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Honor Loxton, Site Manager - Senior Farmer at Crate to Plate, London. February 20222/30

Detail at LettUs Grow, Bristol, February 20223/30

Jason Hawkins-Row, CEO & Founder at Aponic, Suffolk, April 20224/30

Detail at Jones Food Company Ltd. Scunthorpe, January 20225/30

Richard Ballard, Co-Founder of Zero Carbon Farms t-a Growing Underground, Clapham, London, January 20226/30

Zero Carbon Farms t-a Growing Underground, Clapham, London, January 20227/30

Jones Food Company Ltd. Scunthorpe, January 20228/30

Craig Johnston, Co-founder at Enough, Glasgow, June 20229/30

Detail at Enough, Glasgow, June 202210/30

James Perry, Business Development Representative at LettUs Grow, Bristol, February 202211/30

Detail at Entocycle. London, April 202212/30

Detail at Growing Underground, Clapham, London, January 202213/30

Vivien Lee, Entomologist in the Insectary at Entocycle. London, April 202214/30

Detail at Jones Food Company Ltd. Scunthorpe, January 202215/30

Illtud Llyr Dunsford, CEO & Co-Founder of Cellular Agriculture, Wales, February 202216/30

Detail at Crate to Plate, London. February 202217/30

Crate to Plate, London. February 202218/30

Dr Alla Silkina, Research Officer of the ALG-AD project, Swansea University, February 202219/30

Detail at Jones Food Company Ltd. Scunthorpe, January 202220/30

Detail at Apricot Centre CIC at Huxhams Cross Farm, Dartington, May 202221/30

Sinead Fenton of Aweside Farm, East Sussex, April 202222/30

Isabella Tree, Author and co-creator of Knepp Wildland, West Sussex, May 202223/30

Martin Crawford, Founder and director of The Agroforestry Research Trust, Dartington, May 202224/30

Lisa Roberts, Pennant Farm Peatland Restoration in Bwlch y Groes, Snowdonia, March 202225/30

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Back to Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis has grown out of my love of photography and my interests in transformational systemic change and stewardship. Completed over the course of one year, with the generous support of an Environmental Bursary from TPG/RPS, this project enabled me to photograph innovators at the intersection of agriculture and technology and to see first-hand the radical, pioneering approaches they are harnessing in reimagining our food and agriculture systems.

As I made this work, the urgent and extensive nature of the seismic global challenges we are facing – now affecting each one of us directly in unprecedented ways – became clear. We have been witnessing soil degradation, species loss, climate change and population growth for some time, but these issues have been dramatically compounded by Covid-19, Brexit and, most recently, the war against Ukraine, all of which have further destabilised already vulnerable systems, fracturing supply chains, exacerbating food shortages, raising food prices and reducing access to fertilisers and pesticides.

As our knowledge evolves, extraordinary technological breakthroughs and transformations are addressing these areas. The UK is at the leading edge of many of these developments, the speed and scale of which are exceeding anything witnessed by previous generations. Lucas Foglia, a photographer I greatly admire, says, ‘I think photographs about climate change need to focus on possible solutions.’ As I journeyed around the UK photographing the game-changers at the forefront of these changes, I often thought about Lucas’s words and how I might be able to do this with this body of work. I had the great privilege to witness first-hand how farmers, scientists and innovators are radically reimagining how we grow our food and sustain our land – projects as wild and diverse as insect farming, advanced protein fermentation, city farming underground, robotic farm machinery and laser weeders, algae cultivation, regenerative and biodynamic farming, agroforestry, biodiversity, habitat expansion and carbon restoring projects. Each project I photographed was working in new ways towards finding positive outcomes. As Kath Dalmeny, Chief Executive of Sustain said, ‘We are entering a decade in which we must achieve a radically different way of organising ourselves and organising the food system: one that restores nature, averts catastrophic climate change and ensures that everyone can live and eat well.’ 1 It was from this point that I began.