Tamsin Green’s Walking Out of Sleep: Encounters with Lichen Territory explores one woman’s relationship with Map Lichen and the places that they inhabit.

Over a period of two years, Green travelled to locations across the UK to spend time with the lichen, in often remote and challenging terrain. She walked and slept among the lichen, sensitising herself to the elements that these friendly green crusts need to survive. She made photographs and wrote poems — the ‘maps’ guiding her into lichen territory.

Alongside her fieldwork she spent time with displaced lichen. The Natural History Museum in London is home to half a million lichen specimens, looked after by the Curator of Lichens. 120 of these samples are Map Lichen collected across the UK from the 1800s.

Walking Out of Sleep is published by manual.editions — an independent publisher dedicated to the design and making of environmentally conscious handmade photobooks — in an edition of 60, signed and numbered by the artist.

Buy or borrow a copy here. One copy of each book published by manual.editions is available in the manual.editions library to borrow within the UK.

Tamsin Green is a visual artist and architect who uses walking as a process to make photographic work in the landscape. Visit her website here, or follow her on Instagram.