Jake Bowden
BA (Hons) Photography
The Roaring River
The Roaring River is a journey through the landscape of Greater Manchester's peripheral spaces - suburbs, parks, industrial estates and meadows.
Through intentional wandering and drifting, Bowden finds himself traversing unfamiliar landscapes in an area he has always considered home. Exploration for him has always been about turning the unknown into something of relevance, whilst enjoying the novelty a new landscape can bring. By avoiding using a map and instead using the M60 motorway to determine the general direction of travel, knowing the ring road will eventually bring him back to where he started, he gave up the option to prejudge a destination in where he would wander and followed his eyes and ears responding to the serendipity of the landscape that appeared before him, giving the banal and the extraordinary a level playing field to which they can be discovered at equal chance; ultimately forming his own perspective of a place.
Travelling at 3 miles per hour allowed for the opportunity to appeciate things in these spaces, ranging from smaller objects to whole places, that isn't possible at speeds of 60 and 70. He feels this idea of slowing down is important and trancends into other parts of life too, given the current pace of society, it gives us time to see things from a wider perspective for ourselves, maybe stumble and ponder upon important things we otherwise might dismiss or overlook entirely. A chance to meander in the comfort that everyone is travelling at different speeds through life with different destinations.
