Beneath The Bark - 
The Forest Within


This ongoing series was photographed primarily in Epping Forest, Northeast London – an ancient woodland that has become both a physical place and a deeply personal space of reflection.

Nature has always drawn me, not just for its beauty, but for its complexity. The forest, in particular, feels like a living paradox: a space where stillness and violence, decay and renewal, chaos and symmetry all coexist. What fascinates me most is not only how these forces appear in nature, but how they mirror what exists within us.

This series of images is, in many ways, a self-portrait of an inner landscape; they are about looking at yourself emotionally and psychologically. The forest becomes a mirror, a metaphor, and at times a refuge. Walking through this external wildness, photographing it, I find traces of internal conflict and quiet introspection.

With Beneath the Bark, I’m not just documenting a place—I’m engaging with it intimately, searching for visual expressions of the unspoken, the unresolved, the layered parts of being. The bark becomes the threshold: what protects, what conceals, what cracks under pressure. And within the tangled, feral, uncertain terrain that often feels more honest than the surface.

This project invites the viewer to pause and reflect, not just on nature itself, but on the tension and tenderness it shares with our inner worlds. What lies beneath the bark may be messy, quiet, scary or even unsettling, but points toward parts of ourselves we’ve yet to fully understand.