Second Nature - Book Project

A rural scene with a grassy field and a flock of sheep, an old wooden fence, a small shed, and trees on a hill in the background under bright sunlight.
People walking on a pier with a white canopy structure over it, by a calm body of water under a cloudy sky, with distant mountains in the background.

Boundaries between built and natural landscapes. Spaces where concrete meets earth

Absence - Memory - Tension

A reflection on coexistence, impermanence, and the dialogue between human intention and the land that holds it

Construction excavator with tracked wheels on rocky terrain beside a body of water, with overcast sky and safety cones in the foreground.
A chain-link fence with a warning sign attached that reads 'PROPERTY AND HABITED. KEEP OUT!' surrounded by overgrown grass and vegetation in a rural outdoor setting.
Green hilly landscape with a few small structures on a cloudy day.
Rusty metal shed with a slanted roof in a rural farm area, green grass, wooden fencing, trees, and a mountain background.
A sailboat tilted on the water near a rocky shoreline with green mountains and cloudy sky in the background.
A building with a rusty metal roof, tan and black exterior walls, and a crack running down the lower part of the wall, situated by a rocky shoreline with the ocean and cloudy sky in the background.
A row of closed gray garage doors in a commercial building with a single utility pole in front, and a clear sky above.
Concrete pier extending into a body of water with a metal railing, calm waters reflecting sunlight, and a light sky overhead.

The inspiration

This project is a quiet meditation on the evolving conversation between what we build and what the land remembers. It drifts through the edges where concrete meets earth, where timber greys beneath the weather, where the line between human intention and natural persistence begins to soften.

Influenced by the restrained observation of New Topographics and the haunting stillness of Liminal Space photography, these images explore the uneasy poetry of coexistence; the way structures impose, yield, adapt, and are eventually reclaimed. In Aotearoa New Zealand, this tension feels distinct. Ours is a young country by human measure, still finding its rhythm against an ancient landscape. The marks we leave are fresh, and the dialogue between built form and wild terrain remains tentative; a conversation in its early stages, full of pauses, interruptions, and unexpected harmonies.

Every fencepost, footpath, and wall carries a quiet awareness of time, of its own impermanence, and of the land’s patient capacity to take everything back. These are places where the built world is humbled by the slow persistence of the natural one. Each image also acknowledges the layered stories beneath these surfaces: of arrival, settlement, adaptation, and belonging. In Aotearoa, every structure stands upon older ground, where the question of who shapes the land, and who listens to it, remains open. By removing people from the frame, the work embraces silence as a form of attention. The absence becomes its own kind of presence, the echo of intention, the afterimage of human touch. It is in these quiet spaces that the dialogue between nature and construction speaks most clearly.

There is no judgment here, no warning, only observation and reflection.
Each photograph holds a question:
What do these intersections reveal about us?
Where do our creations end and the land begin?
And in this exchange, who is shaping whom?

Through soft contrast and patient composition, the work invites a slower way of seeing, one that recognises the built and natural not as opposites, but as partners in a fragile and ongoing negotiation. The project will culminate in a photography book, gathering these encounters into a single body of work. Though still in its early stages, it continues to grow — quiet and steady, like the environments it seeks to understand.