Stone Isles

Stone Isles explores geology as both a scientific discipline and a cultural inheritance of the UK, the birthplace of modern geology.

Stone Isles (working title) explores geology as both a scientific discipline and a cultural inheritance. The project builds on my personal connection to geology, passed down from my grandfather’s amateur geology interest through my father’s teachings, and situates it within the wider legacy of the UK as the birthplace of modern geology.

James Hutton’s 18th-century observations at Siccar Point reshaped our understanding of the Earth’s timescales; this history continues today through the work of geologists, palaeontologists, educators, and enthusiasts across the UK. My project seeks to document this living culture through portraits, landscapes, and still lives of collections and sites. From iconic locations such as Cwm Idwal, The Jurassic Coast, Isle of Skye, to everyday encounters in homes, museums, and fieldwork, I aim to create a visual record of geology in the United Kingdom in the 21st century.

Photography allows me to position geology as more than an academic pursuit: it becomes a way of understanding time, memory, and identity. I will explore geology not just as material history, but as a deeply human story - one that shapes our relationship to land, our sense of heritage, and our imagination of the past as well as the future.

The work extends my current MA project The Rule of Three, a personal and poetic study of the Mendip Hills, into a nationwide investigation.