y tir / the land -

In 2019, I began walking the land around Pontywaun, a small town nestled in a South Wales valley. These walks started as a way to find space for reflection and gradually became a practice rooted in observation, memory, and making. Photography accompanied me - quietly at first – but soon became my justification for exploring both the landscape and a shifting sense of self.

The mountain that rises above the village forms the backbone of this work. It’s a place of striking beauty, shaped by the scars of its industrial past - quarries, plantation larch once grown for pit props, and neglected ground now returning to wildness. These remnants speak not only of the land’s history but also of the people who continue to live alongside it.

This project is a personal visual survey: part documentary, part encounter, part process. Through walking, photographing, and paying attention, I seek to understand my place in this terrain and what it continues to hold.