Portrait, Fashion and Fine Art Photographer Dorrie Mcveigh is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Adrift’. To see Dorrie’s body of work, click on any image.

On the 18th September 1975, when I was exactly 1 year and 4 months old, I was thrown by an unknown lady from Battersea Bridge into the River Thames . I should have drowned; I nearly did, but for two young men out jogging who saw the event and dived in the river after me just seconds after I slipped under the surface of the water. I have no conscious memory of that day, no lingering fear of water as might have been the case. I now see however, that the event left invisible marks on my psyche that manifest themselves in my dreams and in my visual language.

At the time of the incident my family had just emigrated from New York to London 6 months earlier, leaving generations of friendships and memories behind them . Growing up in London, my siblings and my only connection with our past were the photographs that were in this big faded pink album they had. I don’t how many times we would sit together and spend what felt like whole afternoons sifting through the yellowed pages of that photo album. Those photographs of ours and my parents childhood in America seemed gilded, filled with laughter, friendships, landscapes and moments that filled me with a longing for an unknown homeland that was so poignant it felt like heart break. I understood then the power of photography; the art of capturing love, halting time, and leaving a visual trace of our passage in this universe. In this series I return to the water that has always pervaded my dreams as it seems intrinsically linked to my own vision of my life. The water holds something dark and alluring, both beautifully sensual and universal. It calls to me to return to the source somehow, to let go of my longing, my nostalgia, perhaps even my dreams and dive into its depths and breathe.