Rachel Wallace ARPS - Nothing Gold Can Stay - DPOTY 2019 Shortlist

Rachel Wallace ARPS - 'Nothing gold can stay' - DPOTY 2019 Shortlist

RPS Documentary Photographer of the Year 2019

One year to the day after my mother died and not knowing how or whether to mark it I decided to photograph all the small items I had taken when clearing her house. These held no value or meaning to anyone other than myself and during the year since her death I had placed them, or put them away and forgotten them, or used them. It was comforting to seek and find them and see where they had now ended up - from her home to mine. Six months earlier on a trip to Scotland I found myself photographing dark skies and deep water and I realised that they symbolised my emotions of darkness, isolation and emptiness while at the same time calming and comforting me – smoothing over my wounds. Placing the two projects together became an outlet for my grief and a documentation of a journey to recovery.

Rachel Wallace ARPS

Rachel Wallace ARPS

Rachel Wallace ARPS

Rachel Wallace ARPS

Rachel Wallace ARPS

The first anniversary of my mother’s death motivated me to make this project. It’s not a day one wants to acknowledge, but neither is it a day to ignore. I use photography as a way of expressing myself and so to make photographic work on this day was natural for me, and a comfort.

The project was undertaken over a period of 6 months. It began with images expressing my feelings of grief, taken on a trip to Scotland after my mother’s death, and was completed with the photographs I took on the first anniversary in March 2019. The most challenging part of the project was editing the images to make the two different locations work together and speak. One shoot contains specific objects in an interior setting while the other is of minimal exterior landscapes. In the final work I have paired the images – landscape with object, to make a flowing narrative. Post production, editing, and reviewing took an additional 6 months.

I hope that from this work viewers will see a way of understanding and managing the inevitable. This is one way, and my way, but it may also be something that helps or inspires others who grieve. My DPOTY entry is part of a larger project. There are 32 photos in this body of work which I am making into a book and later an exhibition. Perhaps I will exhibit the completed, printed work on the next anniversary.

Generally I photograph as a visceral and instinctive response to something in the first instance, and then progress my ideas and thinking from there with reading, discussion and research on and around the subject. I make notes, written and visual, and do a lot of walking and contemplation. All visual art such as painting, sculpture, cinema and photography, influences and inspires me. Poetry is important to me and a line or phrase will often be all I need to spark something within my work. The title of my DPOTY work “Nothing gold can stay” comes from Robert Frost’s poem on impermanence. Occasionally there will be false starts before getting properly underway. Once I have started shooting, I make small prints and play with these as part of the editing process. Sometimes I put the work away and work on something else before coming back to it for another look and edit. One has to be careful not to overthink, however.

My background as a photographer is hugely varied having started at a young age in my father’s homemade darkroom and been obsessively photographing ever since. I feel fortunate that I have an analogue background and can work with whatever camera feels appropriate for the job, whether film or digital, 35mm, medium or large format.

I was self-taught until I started a City and Guilds course around 1998 and later achieved a Licentiateship with the RPS by exemption. I went on to gain an Associateship and then attended Central St Martins, gaining a postgraduate certificate in photography in 2009. I am also a funeral photographer, having started this now growing trend in 2008. Last year I completed a Photography MA, with modules in art and documentary photography, at the University of Westminster. My main (but not exclusive) themes are life, death, self and the natural world and I currently have work showing in the Society’s Hundred Heroines exhibition touring the country.

Mark Phillips (Chair, RPS Documentary Group) presents Rachel Wallace with her DPOTY 2019 certificate

Dave Thorp