In my work, I often return to the theme of time — how it accumulates, transforms, and reveals itself through the act of looking. The series Woodlands continues this exploration, focusing on London’s parks and forests as places where natural growth and human history intertwine.
The woodlands form a web of natural, cultural, and historical connections. Many of the trees are so immense they feel more like characters than mere trees — ancient presences that have witnessed generations pass. London’s woodlands and parks feel like gatherings of individuals, breathing beings that have existed for centuries. There is a sensation of standing within nature, but also within layers of culture and history.
For the past year, I have been photographing in London’s parks and woodlands, returning to the same sites and trees again and again. The works I’ve created combine multiple exposures taken at different times. These composite images act as containers of time — literally weaving together slices of separate moments but also reflecting a deeper layering of meaning. 
Perhaps the most common tree in London, and a recurring subject in my photographs, is the London plane. A hybrid of the oriental plane and the American sycamore, it first appeared in the 17th century, when air pollution was already a concern. The plane proved remarkably resilient, thriving in harsh urban conditions, and by the 18th and 19th centuries it had become a defining feature of the city’s streets and parks. Its success spread worldwide, making it one of the most recognizable urban trees.
Trees were also brought into London from around the world. Some species, and even individual trees, are rare elsewhere. The city’s parks and forests feel like collections of these great individuals. Walking among them is like moving through both a forest and a museum of trees. They exist at the intersection of science, aesthetics, and the colonial imagination.
Hampstead Heath is lush and wild, its ancient woodlands mesmerising. There, one truly feels immersed in a forest. Within the Heath lies Kenwood House and its grounds — a prime example of the English landscape garden. Ponds were moved and hills reshaped to create vistas reminiscent of classical landscape paintings. The aim was an illusion of naturalness, as if nothing had been altered — nature, only better. On Hampstead Heath, the experience of nature is inseparable from that of culture and history.
The Heath has long drawn artists. John Constable lived and painted there from 1819 onwards. John Keats, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Roland Penrose, and Lee Miller all made their homes nearby, and Derek Jarman was a frequent visitor. Layers of histories, stories, and artistic visions crisscross the landscape — yet even amid all this, one still feels the quiet presence of the forest. The trees have stood for centuries, their roots intertwined, communicating in their own slow language, witnessing everything that has unfolded around them.
My photographs add one more layer to this multitude — another trace in the continuum of looking, remembering, and belonging. They are attempts to listen to time itself, to see what remains when moments, seasons, and centuries fold together in the stillness of a single image.