Down By The Dee

This is a project inspired by Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi and the legendary book by Robert Frank, The Americans. Like many people in the UK, I'm absolutely furious with the ongoing illegal sewage dumping into rivers across the UK and was also inspired by the driving across North Wales I was doing last year as part of my former job as a school portrait photographer. All these beautiful landscapes and wonderful communities I had no idea about, despite living in Chester for most of my life was eye-opening. So, I decided to make it my mission to document the 190 miles/305km of the River Dee (or to give its Welsh name Afon Dyfrdwy), the communities and the landscapes that are affected by the river and influence the river in kind, from its source in the East of Eyri (Snowdonia) National Park, to its end in the Irish Sea off the coasts of Flintshire and The Wirral. I'd like to thank Welsh Dee Trust for their ongoing support of the project and for helping me understand the science of the current situation and to all of the people, such as the instructors at Bearded Men Adventures who've been so kind to me these past few months in allowing me to photograph them at work and play.