Heavy rain | 2019
I photographed this series at an abandoned archaeological excavation site located in the fields by the road on my way between home and work. Last winter, which was an extremely rainy one, the fields were flooded and turned into a huge expanse of water. As if returning to their archaic state, the one that was before man turned it to a filed; turned back into a huge swamp where relics of buildings emerge to create a magical appearance.
The day I stopped the car and went down with my camera, I felt as if I had stepped into a fantasy world, into a journey in time that may be to the past or might be to the future.
At the excavation area, I found open remnants of buildings thousands of years old, alongside equipment left by archaeologists who worked there in the near past. Remnants of a distant past and a memory of a near past that have merged into a new site.
My photography as the nature of photography captured the moment and preserved the new identity of the place.
The terrestrial site has become for a short time a maritime site, a window into the apocalyptic landscape of the very near future. A future in which global warming will melt the glaciers and sea level will rise. A future where islands, cities and coastal communities will be covered with water and disappear.
In my experience as maritime archaeologist, I explored settlements submerged under water. There is a lot of evidence sea level is fluctuating up & down, this is not a dooms day prophesy of researchers sitting in ivory towers. As someone who grew up in a coastal town I am sad to think that the house I grew up in and with it all my childhood memories will disappear under the waves. Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the possibility of a world covered with water and living life under the sea.