Although we live in Southampton, in 2015 my partner got a job in Bristol, and so had to find accommodation there to ease the burden of commuting. She found a flat perched on the top of the Avon Gorge near the Downs, and I got into the habit of joining her there. We had previously lived in Bristol from 1976 to 1984, and it was fun to reacquaint myself with the city.

Being so near the Gorge, I began taking regular walks along it, either towards Clifton, where Brunel's famous suspension bridge is located, or towards Sea Mills, where the gorge opens out into a less dramatic valley, and the road and the railway to Avonmouth are conveyed over the mudflats of the Avon's tributary river Trym on two rather less elegant structures. Naturally, I take photographs as I walk, and have built up a solid series over the past eight years of regular visits.

I'm wary of photographers who make work in landscapes they do not inhabit as a resident. But no-one really "inhabits" the Avon Gorge. For locals it's primarily a landscape of transition, passed through when commuting into Avonmouth or into the city centre by road or rail, or briefly traversed when driving over the suspension bridge. For others it's a leisure resource: rock climbers learn the ropes on the cliff faces, and on many nights we have watched the flickering lights of mountain-bikers descending down steep tracks through Leigh Woods on the far side of the Gorge from the comfort of our flat. Then there are the peregrine-watchers, who regularly occupy a little rocky platform with their tripods and telescopes, and various other hobbyists, not to mention those in pursuit of various chilly thrills under cover of darkness. But all of these folk, having done whatever they came to do, will go home to somewhere quite different within the city.

Consequently, I feel I am getting to know the area as well as it can be known, and that there is value in my particular take on the visual variety it offers. Being tidal, the Avon rises and falls dramatically twice every day, exposing or covering the mudflats, whose colour depends on the light, the weather conditions, and the direction of view. On a far slower, seasonal timetable, where the sides of the gorge are heavily-wooded the absence, presence, and colour of foliage is in constant flux. By contrast, the human elements in the gorge change very little: what little space there is has already been fully occupied by road and rail.

Mike Chisholm 2023