Rope Walkways

Nature, first prize stories

1996

High up a tree, a protester shouts abuse at security guards. Early in 1996 ecologists, students, old hippies, landowners and others joined forces in order to hamper the construction of a highway bypass around Newbury in southern England. By building tunnels, tree houses and rope walkways between trees the protesters succeeded in slowing work in their attempts to save the forest and preserve sites of scientific and historic interest.

Commissioned by: Network Photographers

Location: Newbury, United Kingdom

Photo Credit: Jonathan Olley

Jonathan Olley (born London 1967) is a British photographer. His art photography focuses on landscapes marked by signs of human folly, but he has also worked as a war reporter and stills photographer for the motion picture industry.

After being ejected from the Chelsea School of Art, Olley attended the post-graduate course at the University of Wales Newport School of Documentary Photography.^[ In 1989, he began work as a freelance press photographer. In 1990, he won the Nikon Press Award for a photo essay in the Independent newspaper. Between 1991 and 93, Olley covered stories on the collapse of the Berlin wall and the 'Velvet Revolution' in Czechoslovakia for the UK press. At the end of 1993 he relocated from London to New York. In 1992, he joined London based Network Photographers and continued to work as freelance photographer, beginning a project in New Mexico and Nevada, USA, on the Atomic Bomb

He worked as stills photographer on the films Green Zone, United 93, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.