India Marney
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Haslemere Summer
For the last four years, each summer, I’ve spent a few weeks in Haslemere cooking for a summer camp on a farm. I sleep in a caravan in a field next to grazing sheep, enjoying a slower and more concious existence. With nature that forces you surrender your pace, to slow down and be present, to see and listen and feel and smell and taste it. Birds and crickets singing the morning chorus, blackberries bursting with juice on the vines, sheep bleating, sunlight gleaming through tree canopies, the intense heat of the day and the relief of a cool evening with clear skies, vegetable beds bursting with produce for little hands to harvest, the people you meet and talk to and how they talk at a different pace to the conversations you’re used to having in cities and towns.
The working hours are long, and spent in a hot kitchen with very little daylight. So, when I do eventually venture outside I’m overcome with how beautiful the space is and how I want to take it all in. How viceral the experience to witness a summer in the countryisde, and how on my return each year I have the same feelings come over me. A yearning and nostalgia for something happening in the present. This space has begun to feel like a home, and now when I think about it, I can acess the sensations I experience when I am there in person.
These images act as a record of my being there, an attempt to capture the beauty I see in the space and the essence of summer in the countryside. These have been taken on various mediums throughout the years, so act as a visual journal and collection of things. Much like how you might jot down an idea in various diaries, to then return when you want to remember. The collection will continue to grow as I spend more years on the farm.