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Chris Mear- Disintegrating Histories

Since 2008, I’ve been exploring a period of post-industrial change in North West Leicestershire, in the heart of England.

The pit closures of the 1980s and 1990s left a deep scar in the economic, social and geographic landscapes of many areas across Britain. In the early 90s the initiation of The National Forest, one of Britain's boldest environmental projects, aimed to transform 200 hundred square miles of scarred landscape, and one of Britain's least wooded regions, into a ‘21st century forest’ - North West Leicestershire was at the centre of this extraordinary proposal.

The regeneration of this landscape has coincidentally aligned with my own lifetime in the area, I was born just five days before the first trees were planted just a short walk from my childhood home. It was this personal connection to these trees that sparked my desire to photograph the area and begin to understand not just its geographic regeneration, but also the effects that the loss of the industry that built the area, and supported it through thick and thin, peace and war, continues to have on the economic and social landscape of the region. Since 2008, I’ve completed three interconnected, conversational projects. Slowly moving through the area in which I grew-up.


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