I Am Always Here | Tom McGahan
What is it about bodies of water that moves us so? We are land roaming creatures and yet, most of us will have experienced a moment of quiet contemplation upon gazing out to sea or across a river on a beautiful summer’s day. As we look, it is as though time has stood still. The water, gently flowing back and forth, holds our attention, and we are free to be alone with our thoughts, to be ourselves.
Writers have for centuries been fascinated by the sea, by rivers and lakes and tributaries of all kinds. They have been moved to wax lyrical through poetry and prose about the delights and devilishness of bodies of water that seem to be complicit in something greater than us and yet remain always impenetrable, unknowable unwilling to spill the secrets contained within. Painters and photographers too have long made water their subject, seduced by its histories and mythologies, inspired by the stories that have played out on, under and around its murky depths.
In his body of work, I Am Always Here, Tom McGahan takes the viewer on a personal journey through an ancient landscape with water at its heart. The Blackwater estuary is a place that can be bleak and uplifting, comforting and unsettling. On a bright, clear day, views seem to extend for miles. Crisp silvery waters that catch the light every so often spill over into a tangle of swards and mudflats. Pockets of ruddy-green earth appear like heavy giant sponges beneath huge, open, endless skies. When the mist rolls in, only a hint of soggy ground may remain visible and one must use one’s imagination to make sense of, to indeed navigate, the landscape.
If we can get lost in the land, we might also lose ourselves in a photograph of a landscape, and McGahan invites us to do just that here: this is a collection of images to disappear into, to be whisked away by. Each photograph flows seamlessly into the next as the estuary itself meanders ever onwards. We catch glimpses of the estuary in different weathers and seasons and occasionally pass by others – locals, perhaps, or fellow visitors, wanderers. Other folk just ‘passing through’.
And, as we travel through the book’s pages, we might draw a parallel not just with the endless journeying of a river, but with the continual meandering of our own lives. For like the estuary, we too must continue upon our path even though we know not where it will lead. And, while we may never ‘find ourselves’ by wandering, literally or otherwise, through a landscape that is indifferent to our presence, there is great peace and deep comfort to be derived from losing ourselves, just for a moment, in such a place as an estuary that was here long before us and will be here long after we have gone.
Gemma Padley.
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book - Tom is self-publishing the series as a limited edition photobook, and pre-orders are open now! Highly recommend bagging a copy while you can...
All images © Tom McGahan