MudOriginal Photo Series

Mud is an ongoing photo series exploring the Isle of Sheppey - a small, weather-beaten island off the North Kent coast in the Thames estuary. Shot through a documentary lens, the project focuses on coastal photography that captures stark landscapes, eroding shorelines and the traces of abandoned industry.

Ben began visiting Sheppey in 2019, drawn to its raw beauty: sweeping mudflats, wind-carved cliffs and the quiet remnants of a once-thriving industrial coastline. Each coastal photo in the series reflects a place shaped as much by economic hardship as by the relentless force of the sea.

Like many parts of coastal Britain, Sheppey has been heavily affected by inequality and long-term underinvestment. Homes along the north shore are routinely lost to coastal erosion, with government intervention deemed too costly. The island stands as a microcosm of the wider social and economic pressures facing the UK, a community navigating a declining tourism trade, disappearing industries and a complicated relationship with change.

Mud aims to document these shifting realities with honesty, using coastal photography to chart both the fragility and resilience of a place caught between past and future.