Judy Harrison, November 2022.

Miss Nadin, Farmer, Staffordshire Moorlands, c.1980 was part of a large body of work, Small Farms in Staffordshire, produced from 1976-1980, which was one of the Half Moon Gallery & Camerawork, London Touring Exhibitions. The work has been exhibited at the RCA, London, The Half Moon Gallery London, Sunderland Arts Centre, Ogilvy, Benson and Mather, London and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. Images from Small Farms in Staffordshire were bought by the V&A and West Midland Arts for their collections.

I walked through the hills and moorlands, walked miles and miles with my camera equipment and began meeting people. Meeting farmers and listening to their stories and then one farmer would recommend me to the next farmer or I would pass somewhere and knock on doors and ask people if I could photograph them, but often I didn’t do this straight away. Getting to know people and building mutual respect before I introduce the camera is hugely important for me and often results in more interesting and in depth work.

There were many unmarried women who were either living on their own, with sisters, or living with one surviving parent. They ran these farms in a stoic, strong manner maintaining their independence, often in isolation. I was interested in the vernacular and the banal, the spaces of the rooms, the objects and a way of living that was fast disappearing elsewhere. But here time seemed to have stood still. I took slow studied formal portraits of them, of the everyday and photographed their cupboards and fireplaces, and drank cups of tea and returned again and again with more photographs to give them.

Some of the farms were cut off so I walked for miles with cameras and tripods through rain, wind and snow. I studied detailed Ordnance Survey maps and the formalities of mapping, listened carefully to weather forecasts and researched the local topography and histories of the spaces. We sometimes wrote letters to each other and they told me about the weather and Small Farms in Staffordshire was based in the Peak District, where I worked within an approximate twenty-mile boundary between Leek and Buxton, crossing the boundaries and edge lands of the undervalued landscape of the Staffordshire Moorlands and Derbyshire Dales. It’s an area of harsh, often barren, landscape with sparsely located small holding farms and farmers, who at that time were struggling to make a living.

narrated events and fleeting moments of the day. I took contact sheets to show them and involved them in the process of choice. This is an important element of collaborative portraiture and understanding the issues and responsibility of the representation of others within image making.

Judy Harrison is a photographer, writer, curator, lecturer, and cultural activist who has published and exhibited widely. Her work is held in collections, including the V&A Museum, London. Born in Stoke-on –Trent 1953, UK, she trained at Manchester Polytechnic, gaining BA (Hons) Photography, (1st) and at the Royal College of Art, MA Photography(RCA). She was Founder and Director of the Mount Pleasant Photography Workshop, Southampton and was a member of Format Picture Agency and Photo Fusion Picture Agency, London. She was Principal Lecturer and Course Leader of the BA(Hons) Photography and MA Photography courses at the University of Portsmouth. She is currently Principal Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. Her publications include Our Faces, Our Spaces: Photography, Community and Representation.