You can learn more about the human condition in a voyage along the Thames than on any long journey over the oceans of the world” – Peter Ackroyd

In Peter Ackroyd’s view, the Thames is more than just a body of water he sees it is a living archive that stores the legacies of everything that has happened along its banks. Flowing through time as much as space, with its greediness always digging into its banks, while the humans would push back and pour concrete to stop it expanding, forcing it on to its course. The Thames is constantly using its greediness to gather and carry the accumulated sediments of memories, holding but also revealing histories of the places.

The river’s flow is a powerful metaphor for how I navigate belonging, memory and identity. Water refuses to be confined by any borders, it will travel from place to place, country to country without needing a passport or identification. It travels across landscapes, carrying layers of sediments and memory. This uninterrupted flow of water mirrors how memory dissolves and re-forms, creating ripples that I interpret as memory traces.

I started reading again On Photography by Susan Sontag, and she speaks about how capturing images can be both an act of revelation and appropriation. There is a connection between how the river shapes its banks over time and the photographer’s gaze, both of which aim to transform the subjects, rendering them timeless but also removing them from their living, able to changing contexts. In Camera Lucida, Barthes writes about the “that-has-been” showing how the photographic apparatus constructs a kind of in-between as it isolates moments in transit, inviting viewers to pause at a single ripple of reality.

I’m interested in discovering why our creativity often comes from the unconscious and we use art to tell stories. We use photographs as “memory traces” to help us hold on to moments that we fear would otherwise slip away. This process is also reminding us of our brief existence and that we are mortals. We also use photographs as a means of telling stories. My Psychology Therapist told me in the last session that when we tell stories and put our experiences into words, it helps identify and recognise patterns, but also can help shift our own perspective on who we are and what we’ve been through. Like a river flowing across landscapes, telling stories in its seams, it can bring things together, cut through old barriers in our minds and create new connections.