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‘Home’

I have lost count of the times I have started writing this entry, in the past few weeks, my broken paragraphs have stumbled between sadness, joy, relief and loss all at once, and I know I have worried far too much over the sound of my own voice.Today is the fifth of November 2014, five years and four months to the day since I first stood in that lavender field clutching my brand new camera, out of my depth and terrified, preparing to shoot the first picture of the Wonderland series. There are times when I wish I could go back and put my arms around my younger self, to soften some of the anxiety I had felt and whisper words of encouragement when there were none left inside of me. To watch the ghosts of Elbie and I working together for the first time, oblivious about how our friendship would blossom – and laugh at the sheer shock on my face when the wind filled the skirts of our ‘Lavender Princess’ as I captured that first big shot.

Back then I was thirty-three years old and completely unaware of where the next few years of my life would take me: the people I would meet, the highs and lows of a changing path that would push me in ways I could have never imagined possible – or would have ever experienced if my mother hadn’t left us that bleak Sunday in November. For seven months I had fallen apart, my body had raged against me to the point that I shook on my way to work and I cried in public everywhere I went. It is true to say that I had never felt so utterly out of control, hopeless and lost.

Nothing can prepare you for grief; it hits you like a runaway train that you are left clinging to, with bleeding fingernails, having no idea how long the journey will be, or where it will end. All you can do is hold on and try your best not to give up or let go. It takes you through dark places, into deep valleys where you can’t remember who you were, and nights that seem never-ending … and on the better days, the sun will come out, and you’ll find you can breathe a little, watch the world pass by and remember that there is still beauty out there, somewhere.

Without beginning this series I shudder to think at how much worse things could have been. Wonderland became my sanctuary, my alternate existence, where I could block out what had happened and run away to a place where it didn’t matter what I looked like, or who I was. I could lose myself behind the camera and disappear deep into the arms of the woodlands that slowly began to heal me in the most unexpected of ways. Like a kite cut from its string, I had lost my family home, the last shred of childhood we all hold on to as adults and long to return to when life gets too hard. I drifted for months but as the project began to grow I noticed the subconscious parallels between my own journey and Katie’s seeping through the pixels, which, over time, eventually became how the narrative was born.

Close up cropped detail sections

Now, years later, as these last summer months have approached and passed, I had felt excited and prepared for the end. I expected some sadness, but on the day I opened the last two files to begin editing, I fell apart in a way I never could have predicted. I sat in the silence of the studio, staring at my monitor with tears rolling down my cheeks. All I could see was myself in Katie’s shoes walking through that blank snowscape, towards a home I could never reach again in my own world. It was indescribably hard and after days of trying to make some kind of progress, I switched off the computer and went to the hills and the woods. I walked and walked until I could make some sense of it all. For five years I had woken up with a never ending ‘to do’ list of editing, shoots and writing for the project. It constantly gave me purpose, distraction and yet at the same time, an unbreakable fine thread back to my mother. Throughout all this time my life had been paralleled through Katie and so an ending for her would also be an ending for me; so I needed to believe it felt right and real for both of us.

Twenty months earlier, in the winter of 2012, I had struggled a great deal with how the closing scene would look and what its message would be. The storyteller in me was full of grand ideas and ‘happily ever after’ endings but to suddenly tear my link in real life from Katie in that last moment felt wrong. The past few years I can only describe as being like swimming towards the surface of the water from the depths of an experience that you can’t quite explain. Three years into the project, at the point of ‘The Distant Pull of Remembrance’, I had turned a corner. I’d decided that it was time to begin the journey back to reality from the fantasy I had buried myself under. Ultimately, I always knew this meant Katie would eventually return home, but she would also be changed by her experiences and somehow I wanted her apprehension and emotion at that last moment to be kept private, her back turned from us.

For me, on the other side of the screen, home could only ever be a metaphor for finally finding some peace within myself and breaking through that surface; something I felt had to be my true state of mind before I released this final image. Consequently, the weeks stretched on as I spent my days in the landscapes of my adult home, trying to find that point in my heart. During this time I made some big decisions and cried a hell of a lot, but now as the first leaves of autumn are here, I can safely say it is time, and at long last I’m ok with letting go.

Shooting The Picture (20th January 2013)

As I write these words it is hard to believe I shot the final scene for Wonderland almost two years ago in January 2013. On the day, I remember feeling so excited and almost shocked that I had finally ‘done it’ and taken the last picture of the series; it didn’t feel real at all. Of course, I was well aware that I still had an entire summer ahead of me to finish creating the last of the pictures, but this shoot meant the story was now locked and there was indeed an end to it all. The reason the scene was shot out of sequence was in order to include the snow. The penultimate moment of Katie passing through the magic door in the woods meant that it would have to be winter on the other side, so the last of the pictures needed to be shot in reverse to meet the correct seasonal conditions. The biggest panic I had was about the lack of time; in the UK, snow can come and go within a few days and typically that year it arrived early before I had finished making the floral coat. So after barely any sleep I had no choice but to gather our little team, pack the unfinished costume and head out into the white expanse that had fallen during the night.

When it comes to location scouting I often hunt for weeks to find the perfect spot, but in this case it was impossible to predict what a place would look like until it had snowed. So without a plan I pressed my face to the glass of the car window, as we silently crawled along the country lanes, scanning the horizon for the perfect house that would soon become Katie’s home.

Without a plan I pressed my face to the glass of the car window, as we silently crawled along country lanes, scanning the horizon for the perfect house that would soon become Katie’s home. After an hour of circling villages and farms, the hills fell away to reveal a vast blanket of untouched snow, edged with a distant frame of frozen trees rising up into the grey February sky. There were no signs of life aside from a single house nestled at the foot of the fields – it was perfect, my heart leapt. We stopped the car, I bit my lip: this was where it would all end.

By the time we had carried everything to the field it was snowing hard. Elbie and I dressed Katie in the coat and much to our amusement we had to wrap her with garment bags and a reflector cover to protect her costume and hair from being ruined. Once she was in position, Elbie set to work creating the yellow trail, carefully striding into the distance filling each of her footsteps with the coloured powder as she went.
It was such a surreal sight: the low visibility had reduced the landscape to nothing more than a faded suggestion. All that was left was Katie cloaked in shivering flowers, with the dissolving sweep of yellow left at her feet. It was already after midday and the winter sun was low and faint as the wind blew snow into our eyes, mouths and the lens of the camera. Katie’s protective layers of plastic were finally removed and instead held over my head to create some shelter, whereupon, from nowhere, a visitor arrived … our robin.

If you are a regular reader of my diary and have been following the series, you may know that in the past we have had some strange things happen on the shoots. They can come in the form of light, or sudden dramatic shifts in the weather. These moments often cause us to take a second glance each at other, and for me to utter my mother’s name under my breath. This day was no exception and as we stood together – the original four friends who began the series all those years ago – we just had to laugh and gasp at what happened next.

The robin appeared in the middle of the empty field and flew straight up to Katie’s feet, we all noticed and pointed as it hopped around and luckily my husband Matt quickly pulled out his phone and started filming. After quickly circling around our group, it disappeared, but then returned immediately and that was when a shiver ran down my spine. Our robin was completely unafraid and after sitting on my boots it decided to perch beside me like an old friend while I took the first shots. It then flew onto Katie and simply stayed with her. I watched with my jaw open as this little bird fluttered along her arms, her shoulders, her head and hands! I have never seen a wild bird behave in such
a familiar way, especially not a robin. There were points when it almost mirrored Katie’s pose, bowing its head, or moving in closely to her face, as if there was an unsaid dialogue between them. It even paused to shelter from the snow in the hollow of her sleeve; all the while my heart heaved in my chest. I continued to take pictures until our new friend flew directly towards me, landing on the reflector above my head. Then, with a great puff of his chest for the camera, he turned and disappeared into the gloom, leaving us stunned and laughing.

Later that night I read that some regard robins as spiritual messengers and harbingers of change. I cannot explain our little encounter, but it transformed the entire emotion of the picture for me and I am so thrilled I have it on film to share with you all.

As the weeks have passed I found myself agonising over which shot to choose for the finished picture – trying to decide which position of the robin would feel right for the relationship between Katie and her new companion. In the end, I chose the fragility of it sheltering from the snow on her hand, held close to her body. I love that the robin is not noticeable at first – it is subtle and acts as a beautiful surprise, like a little hidden treasure waiting to be found.

After our moment with the robin, my focus returned to the picture and we decided to add more yellow to Katie’s trail and skirts. By now it may be clear to some of you that this scene was a deliberate nod to ‘Spirited Away’ taken in the first year of the series, as well as a reconnection and continuation of Katie’s golden path from ‘The Journey Home’. I always intended that this picture would be ‘quiet’ and personal – it could never compete with the grand scenes that came before the door. This was Katie’s real world now, having left Wonderland far behind. I chose to illustrate this as a diptych because I have always imagined this moment like the final two pages of a storybook, as if we are watching her melt away from view into the white of the paper, no more than an illustration and a figment of our memories. It leaves me holding my breath, expecting the book to close and wondering if the door of the house will ever open – and who might run out to hold her.

So here I am, five years and four months later, my fingertips hovering over the keys of my laptop trying to find someway to say goodbye to a series that has changed my entire life. I am now thirty-eight and on the ninth of November, it will be six years since mum passed away. There are days when I almost have no idea how any of this happened, I fell into something I simply could not stop, which became my obsession, my escape, my sanity and my madness all at once. I have never worked so hard in my life. Now I have reached the end I felt I had to do something to represent what this journey has meant for me. I wanted to bring together the fantasy and the reality in one moment, as a memento for myself so I would never forget who I was at this point. I decided to take a self-portrait, my first since before mum died. It’s something I am no longer comfortable with doing but I wanted to be able to look back on this moment when I’m older and may not care about the things that bother me now. For an entire week I scrambled through my attic, my studio and my home to pull together as many physical fragments of the ‘real’ Wonderland I could use: years of test prints, costumes and props, and then tried set myself inside it all. I climbed trees, stole ivy, nailed prints to walls and cut flowers in the same way I approach all of my shoots. What started as a small idea escalated into chaos – like everything I touch! – and now I sit back and laugh as I remember the insects crawling up my legs, the prints peeling off the damp brick wall, and my own nervous stare back at the camera.

So now it is late, and I have just realised it is dark outside. I have sat here for hours looking back through every picture, each one ingrained with the most extraordinary memories and shining with the love I have for my friends. I ache with happiness. There is my dearest Elbie, Katie – my extraordinary muse, and the endless love and support of my husband Matt. There are our wonderful models who have suffered hours of discomfort throughout all types of weather, and Richard, who captured the last of our shoots on film in such a beautiful and precious way. I am so indebted to you all.

Me and Elbie, Jan 2011, on ‘The Briar Rose’ shoot

I now know that in losing my mother I gained a completely different perspective on life. It broke me, but it also rebuilt me with a greater empathy for so many things. This is something that I am relieved to have discovered earlier rather than later in life. I suppose it was her final gift to me and for that I must find a way to be grateful for it. I want to thank everyone who is reading this, who has supported the series and helped motivate and push me along when I have (often) felt overwhelmed, exhausted and like I couldn’t keep going. It is a strange thing to have bared so much in this diary. To tell the truth I still have no explanation for it, nor can I even really comprehend how far it has reached. But please know you have helped me immensely, dear friends, even if we have never met.

My mother Maureen, 1945 – 2008

Finally, to mum: you once wrote me a letter when you were starting your new life in France, and I missed you so much as I was struggling with the distance between us. I have kept it close all these years, and the words seem to resonate now more than ever before. I want you to know I’m doing so much better and that I can talk about you without crying now. I can sleep again and above all, I know you are with me.

You were the rain the day we shot ‘The Briar Rose’; the unexplained light that made us gasp in ‘The Fade of Fallen Memories,’ and the dawn of our ‘Wild Thing’. You were the morning dew on my skin as I crouched in the flowers for ‘Euphaeidae,’ the snow that fell on Elbie and I as we stood alone for ‘Spirited Away’ – and now and forever, you will always be my robin.

I miss you; all these words, all these pictures still cannot surmount what I need to say. I love you, and thank you for being in my life – and I promise that one day, somehow, I will make this the most beautiful book I possibly can. xx