I was recently contacted by a book publisher looking for a suitable image for the front cover of a new title. He was searching for something dark and mysterious to represent the Fenlands — and had come across my photography project completed during the lockdown period. 'Cambridgeshire Fenlands' Photography by: Peter Corr The Fenland Photography Project Followers of this blog may recall the project I completed during lockdown: a series of black and white photographs of the Cam

Living Behind an Embankment — Ten Mile Bank Road Ten Mile Bank Road runs along the top of one of the Fenland's great embankments — a raised causeway that carries the road above the level of the surrounding fields and the river. To live behind such an embankment is to inhabit a particular kind of landscape: one in which the horizon is defined not by the natural topography but by a man-made structure, and in which the relationship between the land and the water is held in a con

Abandoned Farmhouse at Curf Fen Drove, Chatteris The abandoned farmhouse at Curf Fen Drove is one of many such buildings scattered across the Cambridgeshire Fenlands — structures that were once the centres of working farms, now empty and slowly returning to the landscape. The process of abandonment is gradual: first the windows go, then the roof, then the walls begin to subside into the soft peat beneath. The building becomes, over time, a ruin, and then a mound, and then not

Ely Cathedral — A Gothic Presence in the Fenland Landscape Ely Cathedral is one of the great buildings of England — a Gothic structure of extraordinary scale and ambition, set in a landscape that seems almost too flat and open to contain it. The Cathedral was built on an island of slightly higher ground in what was, before the draining of the Fens, a vast expanse of water and marsh. It was, in a very literal sense, a building that rose from the water, and this origin is still

Fenland Farm Buildings at Hale Fen — Landscape Photography The farm buildings of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands occupy a particular place in the visual character of this landscape. Isolated, functional, and often in various states of repair, they punctuate the flat terrain with a directness that is entirely in keeping with the utilitarian spirit of the Fens. At Hale Fen, this quality is especially pronounced: the buildings sit low against the sky, their forms simplified by dista

Ely Cathedral in Winter Fog — The Ship of the Fens Ely Cathedral is known as the Ship of the Fens — a name that captures both its scale and its relationship to the flat landscape that surrounds it. Seen from a distance across the fields, it appears to float above the horizon, its towers rising from the mist like the superstructure of a vessel at sea. The analogy is not merely poetic: the Cathedral was built on an island of slightly higher ground in what was, before the draini

The St. JA, Purveyors of Fine W They say that Dublin is the City of Literature and I have to agree. It may not be W.B, Yeats or Seamus...

'River City' — Mixed Media on Canvas 'River City' is a painting that responds to the experience of a city seen from the water — the particular perspective that a river offers on the urban landscape, with its combination of the ancient and the modern, the monumental and the domestic. The title is deliberately ambiguous: it could refer to any number of cities built on rivers, and this ambiguity is part of the painting's intention. Mixed Media and Urban Landscape The painting wa

Saint Bartholomew (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13) never set foot in Milan but his statue has been the talk of the town...

'Mercurial' — Acrylic on Canvas, Cambridge Envisaged Series 'Mercurial' takes its title from the quality of changeability — the way a surface or a mood can shift rapidly and unpredictably. In the context of the Cambridge Envisaged series, it refers to the city's capacity to present different faces to different observers: ancient and modern, formal and informal, fixed and in constant flux. Acrylic and the Cambridge Series The painting was made in acrylic on canvas, a medium th

The inspiration for this series is the city of Cambridge. As a photographer, I must have walked down every street and alley a thousand...

River City (provisional) ‘River City’ is just a holding name at the moment. I know approximately what I want to say, but haven’t quite...

'Republican Voices' — Mixed Media on Canvas, Cambridge Envisaged Series 'Republican Voices' is one of the more politically inflected works in the Cambridge Envisaged series. The title refers to the tradition of dissent and independent thought that has always existed alongside Cambridge's more conservative institutional structures — the voices that have challenged orthodoxy, questioned authority, and insisted on the primacy of reason over tradition. The Painting The work was m

'Hierarchy' — Mixed Media Acrylic on Canvas, Cambridge Envisaged Series 'Hierarchy' continues the Cambridge Envisaged series, exploring the layered social and architectural structures that define the city. The title refers both to the formal hierarchies of Cambridge's institutional life — the ordering of colleges, faculties, and traditions — and to the visual hierarchies of the painting itself: the way certain elements dominate the composition while others recede. Process and

'Citadel' — Acrylic on Canvas, Cambridge Series 'Citadel' is part of the Cambridge Envisaged series — a body of work that responds to the architecture, history, and atmosphere of Cambridge. The title refers to the sense of enclosure and authority that the city's older buildings project: the colleges, the chapels, the libraries, all of which present a face to the world that is simultaneously welcoming and forbidding. The Cambridge Series The Cambridge Envisaged series was deve

Impromptu Christo Reincarnated in the last decade as the social heart of Doha, Souq Waqif is a wonderful place to explore and an...