HUMAN NATURE: A NEW PHOTO PROJECT
Leaves rustle. A sudden snap underfoot. Distant songs emerge in the air. A caw intercepts. Primeval textures submit to gravity in the understory. They tell stories. They have seen things. Roots underfoot unseen reach out in kindness, nourishing everything that enters it’s domain. Peck. Peck. Peck. I breathe. I am seen.
Hello!
And welcome to my new photo project! Born out of a newfound yearning adoration for the natural world and a quiet rebellion of reclaiming of presence and connection in this anxious technological age, Human Nature is an opportunity to reclaim connection. When it feels the world is ignoring the very real and present threat of climate change, rekindling our relationship to nature might be the remedy we need and a place to witness our own stories too. After all, our ancestors did this for thousands of years before us and like them I’m really intrigued by the connections we have with wild spaces.
Sacred places.
Places we return to throughout all the seasons and bear witness to the returning creatures and life-death cycle of each year. Noticing the everyday which has been in plain sight for years. Choosing to see meaning in life in the mundanity around us. The places we come back to ourselves quietly.
Human Nature is a curious exploration of what is all around us and how being mindfully present in natural spaces can have a profound effect on us.
How does nature contain our emotions?
What role does nature it play in the city?
Does it point you to something bigger outside yourself?
What are you dealing with that nature soothes?
Why do we seek to saturate our senses in green?
What does being in nature make us want to do?
What place knows you?
What landscapes form us?
This project seeks to scratch the surface of these questions and seek answers in the landscapes that are forming us. The places that become part of our inner geography. The woods, rivers, commons, cliffs, parks and fields we carry around long after we've left them. The tree you climbed as a child, the marsh where you scattered ashes, the beach where you recovered from burnout, the park bench you sat on after a divorce, the woodland you visit every Sunday…
All these thoughts collided to make me realise that I could marry this point on contact with my own creativity and invite others to consider these things and help them on their own journey we call ‘life’. So I am offering to set up a walking-talking photoshoot experience in a natural location that speaks to you in SE London/Kent. The idea is to be open and present and see what comes up and create some images together in the chosen space.
“Nature is the answer even when we don’t know the questions!”
Some OF MY background
I grew up in the very last row of houses on a council state in Northern Ireland back in the Troubles. Sandwiched between town and country is how I would describe my whole life, an exile between the two. That bogland by the river was a second home. Mists rising in the evening and long grasses stretching into the hills in the distance. The trees my play place. Coming home with muddy knees every day. I was an only child so apart from my neighbours, this landscape was my friend and teacher. The summer bugs, the stinging nettles, the large trees, the saturated ponds. A faithful companion throughout my whole childhood.
The edge of Ballymena in County Antrim. The Braid river slithers through it.
Having lived in London for half my life I see this mirrored existence and a tensions between the creative energy of the busy urban sprawl and the quiet suburbs with their nature reserves and primordial woodlands that offer for rest and recuperation.
Did you know London is actually a forest?! With over 8.4million trees covering 21% of its total area, London is technically classified as one of the world's largest urban forests by United Nations standards, made up of expansive public parks, surviving ancient woodlands, and millions of private residential gardens.
There is another place back home that feels magical to me. A glen hidden in the North East coast where I would often go with my aunt and uncle on our Sunday ‘wee runs’. They would talk to me about fairies and glens, igniting the celtic imagination in me. It’s damp, dark, lush understory created a mythic world for my creativity to grow. The thunderous waterfalls silenced all my fears and the ferns unfurled something new in me. That place still remains where I reclaim myself and that childish excitement about the natural world.
“Let the fern unfurl your grieving”
My sacred space 5 minutes from my home in SE London.
SOME INSPIRATION…
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet who believed ordinary life was profound. In his poetry series Leaves of Grass, especially “Song of Myself,” he explored the idea that the self, nature, other people, life and death are all connected.
He was such a radical for his time (a gentle rebel maybe). He treated ordinary human experience as worthy of poetry. A blade of grass, a worker, a stranger in the street, a person’s body, a moment of grief: all could contain something sacred. He wrote about the self, the body, nature, democracy, mortality, love, and the strange interconnectedness of all things.
He was fascinated by the idea that a person is not separate from the world around them. The self was porous. That we absorb places, people, memories, and landscapes. Rather than trying to explain life from above, he was often trying to stand inside it, observe it, and say, “look, this is here, this matters.”
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
His famous line from Song of Myself , in his collection he kept revising throughout his life, is less about ego and more about honouring human experience. I invite interested participants to meditate on this and step inside this perspective
How will THE PROJECT work?
I will provide a 1.5 hour photo session to listen to your stories and use that to shape the images. Listening and witnessing you in a natural space that means something to you. A natural habitat. Creating the conditions where something true can appear.
Each story will form a photojournalism series on my blog, and maybe beyond (see a longer example here). Collective stories.
An opportunity to play. Grown up play. Playing your part.
A natural, intuitve, calm experience. An interaction. A place of connection.
NOTE: that this isn’t a headshot or branding session in nature. You can find out more about my Power Portraits here!
I will publish each story on my social media and blog as a photo series. I’m a safe pair of hands and taken 100s of portraits with inexperienced sitters for almost 10 years now. You will be sent the images that are published for your own use.
WHO CAN APPLY?
✨ Anyone who is still reading and feels connected to nature in their own way. Doesn’t matter if you are a friend, a previous client, an old acquaintance, a neighbour or a stranger!
✨ You have a story inside of them wanting to be told
✨ You’re open to a creative, exploratory process
✨ Happy to have their images and words shared as part of a largert project.
How can I get involved?
Send me the form below with your interest and I will try to book one of these per month. I would love to traverse the seasons and collaborate as many diverse people as possible!
FINAL THOUGHTS
This project means a great deal to me. And I’m very excited to see who decides to traverse this path with me… What conversations we will have and what conclusions we might come to about ourselves. Like Walt Whitman, I am so interested in the self as something connected to everything else: the body, the earth, other people, ordinary moments. The idea that a single person is never just a single person. We carry places, histories, ancestors, landscapes, losses.
Donna x
Donna is a storyteller obsessed with belonging, loss, memory, nature and the places that make us who we are.
Further reading: A mix of Fiction and non-fiction that has inspired me
Gossip from the Forest by Sara Maitland
When Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie. (Or anything by her)
The Overstory by Richard Power
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimerer
