“When I met Stuart and his family I felt hope for the first time in ages. Post-pandemic, with the cost-of living crisis, and war and destruction all around us, it is impossible not to get bogged down. This has been much more than a commission: it’s felt like coming up for air.” Johannah Churchill is a portrait and documentary photographer based in the Northeast. Her work centres around social issues; care, connection, and health are frequently referenced, and often interwoven with her history as a nurse. Johannah was commissioned for We Feed The UK alongside the North East Photography Network with the work exhibited at The Sill. She observed macro and micro life at Wharmley Farm over 12 months, through two photographic series. The first, ‘Down to Earth’, documents family life: “Stuart isn’t doing this for attention, for financial gain, or for anything other than what he feels is right. And he’s achieving real change in the face of adversity. You can see the land coming to life.” The second series, ‘Constellations’, captures specimens from the soil through scanographs and microscopic images of the overlooked worms, ‘weeds’, and waste that are so crucial. “When I met Kate Fox for a coffee, we started thinking about the stars, and how positivity is often represented by the act of ‘looking up’. On the farm, I’d had to shift my focus, and told her I thought the constellations were at our feet this whole time.”
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