Photobook Review: Riverland by Marjolein Martinot

Riverland is a book about a river, about the water that flows through it, the flora that lives along its banks, the people that paddle, and swim, and bathe in it. It’s a book about a river that preserves, sustains, and elevates life.

Riverland begins with an image of a young girl in a bikini gazing into the camera. Next comes the title page and then a picture of a doorway to the outside world, the doors open, the shadow of leaves on the curtain that separates the world of the interior from the exterior. We’re moving from the domestic into the natural world.

A horse lies sprawled in a mist-shrouded field, an image reminiscent with the stunning horse sequence from Alys Tomlinson’s brilliant photograph-inspired film, Mother Vera. We are approaching the land of the river in the title, and we see it in the next picture, a bubbling river flowing past man-made embankments overgrown with trees as it disappears into the morning mist.

Subsequent images show the river still, a hill rising in the background, wild flowers growing as the river slinks over a flooded meadow,

It’s a river that’s alive, that has energy and power, that has a soul that can flow through your fingers, into your blood, into your heart. It’s an idea (of nonhuman power) that is as old as life itself and one that has sustained multiple photography projects from Emerson’s pictures of the working river in Norfolk to the psychological landscapes of Morganna Magee.

This is a river that sustained Martinot through difficult times, though we don’t know what those times are. More than sustained, it became part of her, and she became part of it. She wasn’t the only one.

As you move through the book, it becomes inhabited; by flora, by animals, by children. The sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the river threads its way into the arms, the legs, the skin of people who visit. It becomes part of the people who immerse themselves not only in its water, but in its soul.

Children stand in the middle of its stream, trees and cliffs rising up on all sides, sunlight flicking through the leaves, water rippling through fingers. There’s a series of portraits of children in the water or on the riverbank, the background soft and hazy, and there are others of boys climbing trees (reminiscent of Raymond Meeks’ brilliant Half Story Half Life) to jump into the river. They sit by the shore, blow streams of vape from their mouths, and (in one of my favourite images) do handstands in the water, their trousered legs poking out above the surface.

Go deeper into the book and the river becomes a place of rocks and hidden depths. There are side turnings into gorges and pockets where the sun casts its final light. The river is past and present, it’s the primordial soup from which all life emerged, an atavistic memory in which we share.

And that maybe is the story of the book; that democracy of the river, the trees, the land. If we allow it to, it envelopes us, we become part of it, and as we become part of it, we become a part of each other. That is a beautiful thing, and a consolation in a world that seems in so many ways to be running on division and hatred.

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Riverland by Marjolein Martinot is published by Stanley Barker

Published: July 2025
Size: 260x225mm
Pages: 104
Price: £50

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Marjolein Martinot is a Dutch photographer based in France. She has always been drawn to photography from an early age, and has continued using and exploring the medium throughout her life, while raising a family of six children. Her photography touches on the poetic, while striving to remain authentic and true at the same time. She aims to evoke sentiments by using and mixing different photographic approaches and analogue cameras. The prime focus of Marjolein’s work is on everyday life: family, friends, and the places and things that touch her. She currently works on personal projects and commissions.

Colin Pantall is a photographer, writer, and lecturer based in Bath, England. His next online courses and in person workshops begin in January, 2026. More information here. Follow him on Instagram