Medicatrix Naturae

2020

Medicatrix Naturae is an artist book and accompanying sociological essay, a personal ethnography documenting my healing journey after a nervous breakdown lead me to leave the city streets for the forest trees.  A journey which drew me to increasingly perceive the natural world as an extension of self, and our dis-connection from it a major source of society’s mental disturbances. The woodlands of the Chilterns countryside became a place of refuge, trial and contemplation where I could re-discover my personal, semi-spiritual relationship with Nature and begin my process of healing.

The Camera Obscura became the ideal way for me to depict a journey into my interior, aestheticising the intimacy and abstraction of the subconscious. Everything about this meditative process embodies the need to slow down and become more sensorially aware, questioning a modern world seemingly more fixated on artificiality than a connection to Nature.

Part of an ongoing pinhole photography and research project surrounding the mental health implications of living in urban environments, our changing relationship with the natural world and the healing methods open to us should we wish to follow that introspective path.