About Norfolk & Norwich
Norfolk Parish Churches (2015-2024)
Norwich Cathedral Cloisters (2019)
Norfolk is a county in the southeast of England. It is understated, quiet, and flat. It has a long coastline and it is largely agricultural. Even from miles inland, you can see where the sea reflects light upward to illuminate the lower reaches of the sky. I have been drawn to Norfolk for several years, my visits there growing longer and more frequent over time.
One of the chief attractions has been Norfolk’s abundance of medieval parish churches. There are more than 600 of them, and I have visited more than 400. I have no expertise of any kind with regard to these buildings, but I find them of compelling interest, steeped in centuries of human presence. They are scattered all across the landscape, some of them standing alone in vast open spaces, a few remarkably hidden, and many in tiny villages with a handful of houses nearby. I spot a church tower some distance ahead down a country lane. I arrive, and open the latch of a massive, ancient door, and step into perfect silence.
The images that comprise Norfolk Parish Churches are of things that suggest to me elemental qualities of these places. They are meant to evoke more than to illustrate the experience of being within them.
The nave and spire of the 11th-13th C. Norwich Cathedral are strikingly dramatic, but the 13th-15th C. walls of its adjacent cloisters are so understated that they seem almost to disappear. In these photographs, the scarred stones become nearly translucent, their geometry dissolves, and their weight is transformed into light.