How Green Was My Valley

The landscape of South Wales is one heavily marked by industrialisation and commerce. It’s hills were stripped of native trees when mines were dug and blasted into the hillside as. Lumber was necessary to build the pits that dug the Welsh coal that fuelled the Industrial Revolution here and internationally. Even now with the pits long closed the land still feels the effects. Non-native conifers like Larch trees and Spruce and Sitka have been being commercially forested on the desolate hillsides of south Welsh valleys for decades now; contributing to already bleak levels of biodiversity and now causing unforeseen damage to what ecosystems do exist here.

Larch disease in South Wales is caused by the fungus-like pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, first found in the Afan Valley in 2010, leading to widespread felling of infected larch trees to control its rapid spread, with Natural Resources Wales implementing management plans involving felling and replanting with native species, as the disease thrives in the region's wet climate and can kill trees quickly.

This series of medium format black and white film photographs documents the impact that larch disease and commercial logging is having on the landscape of South Wales.