Regent’s Canal - Postcards from the Edge takes the viewer down onto the towpath, away from the usual photogenic tourist viewpoints and offers us a more honest way to express ourselves.

Originally a commercial traffic route, London’s Regent’s Canal has been reinvented as a recreational leisure facility. Much as we paste on a smile to cover up what we are really feeling, available public imagery of the canal overwhelmingly shows us all colluding with the pretty picture postcard view.

The journey along the realities of the towpath acts as a metaphor for feeling ‘on the edge’. I am digitally juxtaposing the idealised vistas with less desirable elements - the vermin, litter, weeds, fly-tipped mattresses, graffiti and tents tactfully ignored by the tourist publicity.

I immerse a camera under the water’s surface to find a more charming, whimsical side to the floating detritus before the light and natural world break through and remind us that by going under the surface of our difficult emotions we will eventually find relief.

I am a London-based photographer, currently studying MA Photography at Falmouth University. My former career in mental health and horticulture therapy developed my lifelong interest in the universal human experience and what motivates us all. I am particularly interested in how photography allows us to express our most difficult feelings and in turn, relate more authentically to others. My current projects explore feelings around family origin, loss and memorialisation.