Matthew Preston: Small Places

Small places is an enquiry into life on the edge of resource extraction. As Flagstaff quarry expands, the skyline disappears.  Composing in-camera and on the land, the images bring together proximate but disparate spaces. Leaf and stem tangle with fractured Jurassic dolerite. New growth and dead stone: each haunt the other, each an absent presence.

This story of economy and ecology is offered as a chance to open ourselves to what changes when we carve materials from the earth. In hours and days humans unpick the work of deep time. No place is static; yet without wondering at what we do, we risk losing more than a landscape.