I was out photographing seascapes one day after seeing on the news a group of refugees had drowned at sea and washed up on the beach. I remember looking out to sea and watching the waves wash up on the shore, I felt numb. As a photographer I wanted to make work that highlighted the issue refugees were facing, I discovered that the first ever refugees were called The Huguenots, a group of French Protestants who came to England in the 16th Century looking for refuge. At the time Winchelsea Beach was home to Rye port, where the Huguenots landed; wooden stumps are all that remains of it now. The wooden stumps felt important, as if gravestones of the refugees who had lost their lives at sea. I began collecting items that had been washed up on the shore by the waves, I wanted to represent the belonging’s washed up on shore belonging to the refugees, I then photographed them in the studio.