Elmwood: Pictures from Dartmoor

Elmwood: Pictures from Dartmoor is a series of Large Format colour photographs made on Dartmoor National Park, Southwest England, towards the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nicholas grew up on Canford Heath, one of the largest housing estates in Europe. Each year, his family would escape the enclosure of the estate and head for Dartmoor to holiday with Nicholas' grandparents at their home, Elmwood. When his father's business collapsed, the family was forced to relocate. Hopscotching between communities and occasionally living apart, Elmwood remained. It became the confluence of family life, and an embodiment of belonging and home throughout prolonged instability. Elmwood was eventually sold, but the landscapes of home remained and so did the habit of returning to them.

Nicholas eventually relocated to Dartmoor.

Elmwood: Pictures from Dartmoor is the result of that return. Made across multiple seasons, the photographs follow paths walked since childhood – over hopped fences, along river valleys and up to the granite tors of the high moor. These are pictures made slowly, at the edges of the day, in morning mist and the half-glow of dusk. The Large Format process demands patience and deliberateness, a way of seeing that compliments a project rooted in memory and attention.

The work sits at the intersection of landscape and autobiography. It is about connection, loss, familiarity and surprise. These are photographs about what it means to belong somewhere, about the paths we keep walking, the meaning of home and the persistent power of memories that makes us belong.

Although the work began as an ode to returning, it simultaneously became a slow farewell. In 2024, Nicholas relocated his home and studio to the Northwest Highlands of Scotland.

Selected photographs from Elmwood were shown alongside the work of Garry Fabian Miller for his survey show, Adore at Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol in 2023 and were later exhibited at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum for their group exhibit Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape in 2024-2025.