Video Stories

I spend 150 hours alone each week

Madeleine Waller

I spend 150 hours alone each week. This short film explores aging, memory, and connection in a rapidly changing world. Through still photographs, it follows my 90-year-old mother living alone in rural Australia, capturing the quiet rhythms of her daily life.

Separated by distance, I live in the UK, and her determination not to use modern technology, we navigate an emotional divide. Her home, built by my late father, stands as a powerful symbol of love, loss, and attachment, holding a lifetime of memories.

This work is a personal reflection on family aging and the resilience of a woman trying to remain connected in a world that is constantly moving forward.

Mantelpiece Stories

Madeleine Waller

Mantelpiece Stories, commissioned by Bolton Museum and Library, is a series of portraits and short films about six Bolton households. It explores the emotional attachment we have to the objects and possessions we choose to keep and display in our homes.

The films were run in conjunction with the Mass Observation 1937 Mantelpiece Reports, which asked volunteers to share what was on their mantelpieces. The resulting insights reveal how seemingly ordinary objects are rich with meaning — suggesting that we are, in many ways, what we live with.

Trying to Make Sense of Bereavement after Suicide

Madeleine Waller

Trying to Make Sense of Bereavement after Suicide is a collection of short films drawn from a Zoom conversation exploring the impact of suicide on those left behind.

Each year, more than 700,000 people die by suicide worldwide. In the UK, the figure is around 7,000, making it the leading cause of death for people aged 20–34 and for men under 50. The ripple effect is vast, with millions experiencing loss each year.

Despite this, suicide is often surrounded by silence, stigma and misunderstanding. In these films, contributors speak openly in the hope of offering comfort, connection and recognition to others navigating bereavement.

If you would like support, please visit:
makingfamiliescount.org.uk/bereaved-by-suicide

Midlife

Natasha Bennett

This video is part of an ongoing project exploring women’s relationships with their bodies. Three films have been made so far, with a fourth planned. The works combine still images and audio interviews with women of different ages, each facing distinct challenges.

Midlife presents an honest, unrehearsed voice speaking about lived experience. It invites reflection — whether you recognise yourself, or see the experiences of a sister,

How Do You Dance in a War Zone?

Maria Falconer FRPS

When people think of dance, they often imagine something poetic — arabesques and pirouettes, grace and elegance.

But this notion could not be further from the stark form of resistance presented by the Ukrainian dance community, where dancers prepare volunteer soldiers for combat and the military, in turn, teach dancers how to fight.

The Heartbeat of Trees

Rosalind Lowry

A story of the women who worked the land, with sepia portraits of women attached to trees the same age as they were when they began working the land or emigrating to another land. Each child, girl, or woman is honoured with a corresponding tree.

Installed temporarily in forests in County Antrim and Alaska, this work speaks of survival, memory, and ancestral honouring.

MOTHER

Lisa Jayne Cramer

My mother just turned 92 and has recently been diagnosed with Vascular Dementia. Moments of wonder are precious as she comes in and out of lucidity. The veil is silently reigning down upon us with great feeling of love and sorrow.

From my ongoing project, BEAUTIFUL AGE what we never see even though we are looking, I have included analogue stills with video to tell a story; this story of my mother's days residing with me. I am my mother's daughter, I am my mother's carer. Childless not by choice, I have finally been chosen.

This is a story where Love restores all reason.

History Of Hysteria

Beatrice Updegraff

The inspiration for this project began long before I considered myself a photojournalist. In 2017 on a visit to a medical professional I was told to ‘cheer up’. At the time I was already taking antidepressants and suffering from anxiety, depressive episodes and suicidal ideation. Within the next few months, I was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder. ‘Cheering up’ was not an option.

In the following years, I reflected on these words and began discussing my experience. I found other women with similar stories of being dismissed when seeking help for both mental and physical health. In my research I discovered shocking statistics backing up my anecdotal evidence; gender bias is deeply ingrained in the medical profession with often tragic consequences.

In my research, one word came up repeatedly: ‘hysteria’. Derived from the Greek word for ‘wandering womb’, this stereotyping and subjugation dates back thousands of years.

From records from physicians in the 11th Century, to images taken in asylums by photographer Albert Londe; from the extermination of 500,000 women during the European witch trials, to notebooks from Bethlem Royal Hospital, this troubling rhetoric has peppered history and created a turbulent and dangerous present-day reality. A History Of Hysteria examines the troubling trajectory of gender bias and its often devastating consequences for women today.

Between The Walls and The Trees

Ruth Hanson ARPS

Between the Walls and the Trees is a film about freedom. Made between the castle walls of my hometown and the trees and houses beside it, the work reflects on reclaimed feelings of safety and freedom following relentless traumatic experiences. Walls, bars, trees, birds, and the pounding sound of a heartbeat become symbols of both trauma and recovery.

I include my own shadow as a self-portrait, layering and exploring personal storytelling through photography as a vital part of my recovery process.

The film was shot on a Lomokino camera using 35mm film, which I hand-developed, scanned, and animated. Later, reflecting on the work, I wrote the words “stay, it is over, you are safe here” and “the birds know how to be.”

Corn Husks Belper

Sarah Skinner

This is a short video I put together as a way to show a series of photographs taken along a route I know well — the scenic (but quite long) walk home from town. It was a dull day and I wasn’t planning to make images, but I was caught by the ugly-beauty of a corn husk lying there, bleached and dried, long after harvest.

At first it seemed to be the only cob left, but then I noticed others — similar yet different — each striking in form. At home, I carefully sequenced the images and used a silvertone filter to reduce the surrounding greenery and emphasise the structure of the husks.

I was also thinking of Dorothea Lange and the dust-bowl era of photography. For me, the video evokes thoughts of ageing, death, beauty, and the natural cycle — and how beauty can be found even on the most mundane walks.

Layered Memories

Jane Robb

I travelled to Ghana, Senegal and the Gambia in August 2025 and I was inspired by a prompt to take videos of small moments of reflection - of which I had many while travelling. The piece tells a story of the journey of travel and memories, many of which are layered in time and recollection, where we may see parts of our lives through other parts of a journey. Together, they hopefully also add to a bigger story that can tell of more than just my own memories of travel.

From Still to Sequence: Exploring Time, Process and State of Mind

Jennie Meadows

This work explores a photographic process through both practice and context, combining a step-by-step guide with a brief look at its historical use by other artists.

The first film, Twitten, is a two-minute observational piece of Boundary Passage, an alleyway between Brighton and Hove, created using time-lapse and hyper-lapse techniques. The final film was edited from 400 stills, selected from around 4,000 images taken over three weeks and assembled in Adobe Premiere Pro.

The second film, Psychoffee, was made using the same process. Inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Duane Michals, it uses photographic stills and metaphor to explore themes of anxiety and states of mind many people experience.

👉 Read the full blog here:
https://jenniemeadowshncccr.wordpress.com/category/blog-task-4/

Fair Winds and Following Seas

Sinead Le Blond

Through a blend of stills, video, and voice, Sinead shares a deeply personal and creative story — a beautiful reminder of how photography and film can express not just what we see, but who we are.

Icelandic Photography Expedition

Sue Wright

In 2018, I organised and led a photography journey to Iceland with an extraordinary group of people from Blesma – The Limbless Veterans.

For one unforgettable week, eight Blesma members set out to photograph Iceland’s dramatic landscapes — from vast open spaces to moments of quiet stillness. This was a group defined not by limitation, but by determination: two wheelchair users, two registered blind, three amputees, and a war widow — all pushing personal and creative boundaries together.

This experience was about far more than learning photography. It was about confidence, independence, resilience, and the shared joy of making images in challenging environments. It was about adapting, supporting one another, and proving that creativity and adventure are for everyone.

This is more than mindful photography —
it’s about getting out there and doing it.