936 - a fluid border

In 936, King Æthelstan fixed the River Tamar as the boundary between Wessex and the Cornish. That decree produced a line.
What eleven centuries of crossing, trading, quarrelling and intermarrying have made of it is something different - a borderland.

I grew up in Saltash, in the borderland, near the mouth of the River Tamar.

Nine Three Six photographs this borderland as it exists now. The river still carries the weight of its history: mining, industrial archeology and land contamination, collapsed industries. There are new harms too from sewage outfalls and runoff. There is also hope and rejuvenation - new market garden, local products, walking trails and vineyards.
On both banks, people share businesses, pubs, markets, schools, auction houses and dialect without ceremony. The border persists.
Symbols of identity hint at an otherness. But daily life moves across it regardless.

Through landscape, portrait and symbol, the project asks a single question: do borders divide us, or do they provide the common ground that defines us?

This is an ongoing project, with plans to work with local organisations to develop this story.