“Every full moon, we go in the water without a swimming costume. We wear bobble hats, little boots and swimming gloves. The swimming makes you feel alive, You are not seeing but you are feeling, and the water is silky it embraces you and supports you. The group has that feeling too. It is just a complete contrast to modern life.”.
Au Naturel Swimmers Secret location near Otley
"I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free..."
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
In this new art installation, inspired by personal journeys and stories of discovery, renowned artist and portrait photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn celebrates the female connection to nature, examining how feeling connected to the natural world can be an inspiring and important aspect of everyday life for women.
Over the course of four months, Carolyn embarked on a series of adventures to capture the personal stories of remarkable women living and working in the Bradford District; women who work on the land, women who are inspired by the land, and women for whom the landscape is a place of freedom.
Inspired by the power and prevalence of the natural world in the lives and literature of the Brontës, this immersive installation celebrates the enduring connection between Yorkshire women and the landscape today, telling unique and powerful stories through projection, soundscapes, personal objects and a filmic collection of photographs.
A link to each audio story is available in the text with the portraits.
“Being outside is everything to me really, If I couldn’t be outside I wouldn’t have any point to me.".
Meryl Clarke Yorkshire Flower Farm
“To me this is a very freeing space. I feel calm, I feel like I am exactly where I am meant to be when I am here. It transports me. I could be feeling stressed or sad or angry, and I sit down and take it in and within half an hour I am feeling calm and well grounded.
Kemmi Gill Goitstock Waterfall
My dream is to make it a healing allotment. I would like for people to come in here and feel a sense of healing, to create a space where people can walk in and not forget about their problems, but accept the problems they can’t change.
Nyarai Urbanek Bradford Allotment
“Walking is a real respite for me in a way that I can breath and calm down after a busy days work. It is my form of therapy, it is my form of prayer, it is my form of meditation.".
Aina J Khan Harden Grange Folly
"To be able to have the freedom of that view, that wildness, that reckless abandon. And I was stuck in in this room. My prison." .
Jo Foster Askwith Moor
"To be able to have the freedom of that view, that wildness, that reckless abandon. And I was stuck in in this room. My prison." .
Jo Foster Askwith Moor
“I just feel really calm, really peaceful, and connected to something greater than myself.. There is a concept in many faiths, this idea of a thin space where the gap between heaven and earth is really thin, and to me this is a thin place. “.
Jenny Ramsden Bronte Waterfalls
https://on.soundcloud.com/MBoctmHmP9ZPv9A78
Spareland was this place that from the age of 7 to 11 me, my brothers and all the kids on the street took over. We had a whole world on Spareland and would be out all day, from as soon as we work up until really late. It felt massive. There was a magic in that, and a magic in us feeling powerful. I remember how expansive it was and how big it felt and how possible things felt. It was always a space of potential. “
Evie Manning ‘ Spareland’ BD3
“We don’t really call ourselves farmers wives these days, because we are doing the farming, we are not just at home baking bread. We are physically farming as well. I do most jobs, apart from milking.”.
Rachel Coates Low Springs, Baildon
“When you look up at Top Withens, you see that one tree behind the building, then as you get closer you see its two trees. For me that was a sign of the strength you get from partnerships. It’s a really inhospitable landscape up here, in someways, but you can see how those two trees, have grown next to each other and took shelter from each other”
Lucy Elkiss Top Withins
"I grew up constantly looking up at the hills, and wanting to get up there to see what the view was like from up there.. I have walked here in the rain, in the snow, when it is sunny when it is windy, at night, during the day, but each time I go up it feels different.
Shanaz Gulzar Keighley Moor
“I am a special Olympian. I feel confident, I enjoy riding a bike up hills, and down hills. “.
Ella Curtis Roberts Park
