Your photography has been focused specifically on the subject of energy in recent years. What inspired you to take this direction?
When I was studying for my MA in contemporary photography in London, I was looking at ideas for doing a project looking at industrial landscapes, and on the way back from another shoot, I photographed the local power plant for my own hometown in the north of England. It hooked me in by making it a photographic subject. Suddenly after spending an hour or two in its presence, especially after dark, it really hit home for me for the first time — that kind of relationship between myself as a consumer and the kind of power generation and the landscape all together. A lot of photography can become self-reflexive or look at a small topic area, but I suddenly felt that it was such an important topic moving forward.

We see a variety of physical spaces in The Renewables Project — the tunnels and control rooms that are part of a hydroelectric system but also the landscape surrounding it. It strikes me that you are documenting a sustainable form of energy while also displaying the beauty of the earth that’s being sustained. What are your thoughts on that connection?
     Especially in the UK, one of the biggest blockers in our increased uptake of renewable energy is the idea that it’s a spoiler to a landscape. Personally, I think that’s kind of a narrow viewpoint on what is a long-term problem. With the Scottish project, what really interested me in it is that this is a renewable technology that’s been installed for almost fifty or sixty years in some places. I wanted to show a balance between the beautiful landscape up there and the technology that’s embedded within it. I wanted to show how they could coexist.