William Austin-Lobley Photography

The Fens – 3,900 km² of farmland and artificial drainage, and home to the lowest point in Great Britain, which sits 2.75m below sea level. 

I was born and raised in Peterborough, which borders the great drained marshes. My family tree reads like a census of the area. But I’ve never loved The Fens. 

The Fens are vast and flat. When my dad and I were completing the Yorkshire Three Peaks, we told a Liverpudlian man where we were from, and he replied, “Blimey, you can see into next week down there.” I think about that comment a lot. The more I do, the less it feels like a joke and more like a pithy observation. Maybe you can see into the future in The Fens as you stare into the distance. You wouldn’t be able to tell because it never changes. 

For the longest time, I’ve railed against The Fens, thinking of it as uninspiring, awkward to navigate and endlessly dull. I like coastlines and mountains, and in future, I will be moving to a more suitable area for my tastes. My wife and I had near-imminent plans to leave, but events have transpired that have us sticking around a little longer. It would be easy for me to fall into old habits and sit in a huff about this for the next year, but I’ve decided to take a different approach. 

I’m an outdoor photographer. I want to take photographs. I live by The Fens, and as much as I would like a mountain or hillside to crop up in the middle of it, that isn’t going to happen. So, instead, I’ve decided to embrace it. 

Enter Fenland, my project to photograph the life and landscape of the marshes. 

This project is a hybrid of two major photographic drives: my desire to capture natural and rural landscapes and my desire to document. 

I plan for this to be a long-running, evolving project. 

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