Where the river turns

‘In 2023 I came to Arles seeking a quiet few days away from London, trying to make sense of the emotional wreckage left by a toxic five-year relationship with someone who displayed all the traits of a Cluster B personality disorder.

I’d been betrayed and broken in ways I couldn’t yet understand. Sitting on the banks of the Rhône, I felt haunted by memories of my previous visit to Arles years earlier with her, when everything had seemed so full of promise.

The pain was raw, like mourning a death.

That dark chapter had led me to Sri Lanka the year before, in 2022, in search of clarity and healing. It was there, through the people I met and the experiences that unfolded, that I found the inspiration for this portrait and a creative energy I’d long been missing.

To see my photograph exhibited along that same riverbank in 2025 felt surreal, almost poetic. Life has a strange way of coming full circle. What once symbolised heartbreak became a place of renewal.

I’ve come to realise that some people enter your life only to destroy the goodness you carry, because they lack it themselves. It was a painful lesson, but it showed me how much I truly had to give, compassion, creativity, light. The proof was in what followed: the recognition of my work, the joy it’s brought to others, and the incredible people I’ve met along the way. Pain, I’ve learned, can be a powerful teacher. It strips you down, but it can also rebuild you into someone stronger, more open, more whole.

This image, on those same banks where I once felt lost, now stands as a quiet reminder of how far life can bring you when you keep moving forward..’