Fossil Tree Rock, Staward Gorge

For eighteen months I returned to Fossil Tree Rock in Staward Gorge at least three times each week. The gesture was simple and deliberate: to walk to the site, to stand, to look, to photograph. Through repetition the rock became a point of orientation within the Gorge—a steady presence against which light, weather, river levels and seasonal change could be measured.

The work emerged through sustained attention. Changes almost imperceptible in a single visit accumulated over time: damp stone darkening after rain, winter light flattening form, summer growth pressing closer, the gradual abrasion of rock through freeze, thaw and flow. The photographs became less a record of the rock itself than of an evolving relationship with it.

After the final photographs were made, a rock fall buried Fossil Tree Rock. What began as an open-ended study of return and duration unexpectedly became an archive of a place that can no longer be encountered in the same way.

Looking back, I see this work as an important step in the development of my practice. It deepened my understanding that places are not fixed, and that sustained attention can transform both what we see and how we relate to it. The loss of the rock did not end the work; it changed what the work came to mean.