I’ve always had a thing about paths and pathways, so when I saw on instagram that that my relatively new friend Laura was reading The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane and that it was a book all about ancient paths and how they came into being, I just knew that it was a book I was going to have to read.
I say I have a thing about paths – I also have a thing for doorways, maps, and ruins but in this case I’m talking about paths – and pathways. My final degree show pictures included paths and pathways and I documented maps of the routes they incorporated.
A map of the Cevennes region of France inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Travels With My Donkey’ and Richard Holmes retracing of those footsteps.
A ficticious land drawn from the topography of Wales, with street patterns from France.
In my second year of university I even made my first ever video project around the theme of paths, tracks, and the way that we, as a people, are scarring the landscape with our feet, our tracks, and our roads. It’s a short film about going places (and getting there), and the damage we leave behind…
