By Mark Tamer

Two hundred years ago brought us two transformative inventions: the advent of rail travel and Nicéphore Niépce’s pioneering photographic image, View from the Window at Le Gras. Both offered new ways of seeing. Gazing from a train window, the landscape becomes a moving panorama—a private cinema where fleeting moments unfold in real time. It marked the beginning of a world in motion, where speed and time became paramount.

For the past few years, I’ve been retracing the same route every couple of months, journeying from London to Lowestoft and back. These trips have become a ritual of reflection, offering me a front-row seat to ephemeral vignettes of life and nature. A pair of fawns in an empty field, our eyes locking for a split second. A herd of horses racing the train, their joy palpable in a game of chase. Alien-like pylons marching across the flatlands, their wires crisscrossing the rail tracks below. Each moment is transient, gone as quickly as it appears, the journey playing out like an unedited film.

Chronic illness has, in recent years, altered how I navigate the world. With my vision and balance affected, long walks or car journeys are no longer possible. The train has become my bridge to the landscapes I might otherwise miss, bringing me to moments of beauty and stark contrasts in a form that feels both intimate and expansive.

And the list on Spotify:

“I am an experimental photographer working with both analogue and digital mediums. Through my work I’m looking to find a balance between chance and control, and between; construction and destruction, signal and noise and ultimately, life and death. I embrace the accidents and errors as they not only remind us how vulnerable and delicate we are, they can often show us something new. It is at the point of breakdown that the medium begins to reveal itself. Through glitches and mistakes we get to see the base elements, the very construction of the material that creates those illusions of reality, the apparatus of photography itself.“

See more of Mark Tamer’s work on his website and on Instagram at unreelcity.