This series of South Downs portraits starts in March 2002, when I worked as a photographer for the Countryside Agency. The establishment of a South Downs National Park was then in its earliest stages.

The South Downs have since become England’s most densely populated National Park. This project is an attempt to describe a landscape through people whose lives are connected with it.

The pictures of local people are often taken besides commissioned photography. They are portraits of people who helped me see the South Downs from the perspective of those who live with this landscape. For me, these pictures are above all social documents, a record of people and landscape at a time of change.

A first selection of ‘Faces of the South Downs’ was shown in an Arts Council funded touring exhibition in 2005. This was followed by a second exhibition, in 2015, at the Weald and Downland Museaum Singleton. A third exhibition is scheduled in the same place for 2025, March 3 – May 18. There will also be a new publication on the entire project.