From Here to Eternity, 2022

In 2022, I was in the process of recovering from a year long battle with bowel Cancer. There is around 44,000 cases of bowel Cancer in the UK year, with an estimated 16,000 deaths. The statistics for people between the ages of 20-30 are a little murkier, but it is estimated that there are around 1 in 100,000 cases within this age group. I was diagnosed with Stage 3 Bowel Cancer in 2021, at the age of 27. Within two weeks of diagnosis, I found myself sitting in a chair, with an IV in my arm as the chemotherapy treatment began to drip slowly into my veins; a clear liquid which I came to fear. Every time I see clear water, I think of this poison, and I am pulled back into the my waking nightmare of shivering nausea. I received a cocktail of two drugs called Oxaliplatin and Capacetabine, which used together form a treatment regime called Capox. Both of these drugs were patented in the mid 1990’s, reaching the market a few years later. Oxaliplatin affects the bodies nerves, which causes sensitivity to touch and coldness. When the nurses came to remove my IV after the first round of Chemotherapy, the pain caused by the removing the adhesive patches (which held the IV in position) was so painful that I was shouting and swearing. This was my baptism into Cancer treatment and the beginning of a long and difficult journey. I have taken many risks through my life in search of adventure and experience, but this seemed to be the end, this is how I would die. Over the following year my entire identity and sense of self was stripped away, layer by layer; my deepest fears rose from the unconscious depths of my mind as my life was consumed by a singularity. My hopes, dreams and ambitions were torn away me, like a rope snapping under tension. The tightly compacted treatments of Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy and surgery had left with me with permanent physical limitations and side effects. As I desperately grasped to to reclaim my physical health and return to a sense of ‘normality’, I turned to photographing the places of my childhood as a way of processing what I had been through, and what came next after this life changing experience. The process of making this work was physically challenging, as neuropathy in my hands made it difficult to operate my camera, and touching the cold surfaces of my equipment was painful, but I persevered. The name of the series is a reference to “From Here to Eternity” by Kyle Bobby Dunn, a Canadian ambient musician; which provided the soundtrack through the many days and weeks spent photographing the non-places of my distant childhood memories. This series depicts a murky and foggy atmosphere, which mirrors the fog within my own fractured state of mind, as I grappled with what had happened to me and the uncertain future that laid ahead. Throughout the series there is a sense of a looming presence that is difficult to comprehend, something viscerally real, but not seen or heard. Fighting cancer is a slow and undignified process, it is a silent war which is fought quietly, and takes its victims indiscriminately.