Orbiting Hove is a project made in response to the social and spatial restrictions placed upon us in the U.K. during the Covid-19 pandemic.

During lockdown, when I wasn't working part-time as a care worker, I spent a majority of my spare time walking to and from Hove Park in East Sussex. These green spaces became an important destination for me each day. Either as a place of exercise or, when the weather got warmer, somewhere to relax, slow down and to experience a time where my immediate, physical environment didn’t mirror that of, what felt to be, our wider context.

In time, I decided to take my camera and document my walking through the various roads and green spaces that I encountered on my way. Visiting Hove Park & the Recreation Grounds over an extended and regular period of time ended up bringing to my awareness certain aspects of these places that, through the process of absently walking, were previously unseen. Reminiscent of methods similar to the Situationists (1957-1972), I began to walk to the park using different routes I hadn’t taken before. Both as a means to discover areas of my neighbourhood previously unknown, and to offer an alternative course that over time had become monotonous and, at time, just as restrictive.

In this sense, this small project is part socio-documentary (charting a particular area of England during a global pandemic) and part photo-therapy (a way to get out of the house, focus, and stimulate myself).

All images were taken between May and August 2020.