Thames

In the spring of 2006 when the artist Stephan Kaluza and his team started to photograph both banks of the 215-mile-long River Thames from its source in the Cotswold Hills to its mouth in the North Sea the challenge was to form consecutive sequences of the astonishingly changing and varied riverscapes. They went partly on foot and partly by boat and took pictures of each bank every few seconds, ending up with about 30,000 images which were then digitally combined: the effect is almost cinematic. In spite of the immense scale of the project, there is an intimacy: it is like looking at the banks with your own eyes rather than through the lens of a camera. The journey takes the reader along the north bank and back along the south, travelling through rural limestone villages, the city of Oxford, Henley on Thames, Marlow, Windsor Great Park and past Hampton Court before reaching London. It continues through the industrial areas of Royal Banks and Silvertown towards the mouth, passing the wharfs that made London one of the most important trading ports in the world, as well as the Thames Flood Barrier.