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 consistent 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 shifts could be measured.

The work emerges from sustained attention. Changes that appear imperceptible in a single visit accumulate over time: damp surfaces darkening after rain, winter light flattening form, summer growth pressing closer, the gradual abrasion of stone through freeze, thaw and flow. The rock carried both geological time and the immediacy of daily weather.

After this sequence of photographs was completed, a rock fall destroyed Fossil Tree Rock completely. The images now hold a different weight. What began as an ongoing study of duration and return has become an archive of something that no longer exists in the landscape.

The project continues my interest in landscape as a site of slow transformation, and in walking and repetition as methods for deepening attention to place.