The Secret Locked In The Roots Of A Kingdom & The Pure Blood Of A Blossom

 ‘The Secret Locked In The Roots Of A Kingdom’

It’s late, I should have gone home hours ago, but the thrashing rain at the dark mouth of the window and the roar of the wind that rips through the empty streets below has kept me here later than planned.

The blanket I’m wrapped in and the soft lights of the studio are far more appealing than the broken umbrella that leans awkwardly against the door, so I guess I’ll stay and write a little longer.

In a way this will be a different kind of diary entry compared to the last two, simply because these new pictures feel so much lighter in my heart. Somehow it always feels like coming home whenever I photograph Katie, the muse and heroine of my story. For almost five years I have projected my emotions onto her, and created a world around this timeless gift of a girl.
I feel I know every hair on her head, every crease in her skin and I’ve stared into her eyes more over these last few weeks than probably any other person she knows. Without Katie this series would have been nothing and I am so grateful to have been on this remarkable journey with her. As I look around my studio her image radiates back at me: glowing from a lake filled with lilies at sunset, sitting upon a giant cake dripping in liquid yellows and pinks, while high up on my shelf she walks through waist-deep ferns wearing tattered wings just after dawn. All of them are real memories, captured and framed like fragments of the most fantastical dream. It’s a dream we all lived for real and one I never want to wake up from. They are postcards from the most extraordinary moments of my
life and treasures I will cherish always – and, for tonight, they are my company.

To return to the story, during the last scene ‘She’ll Wait For You In the Shadows Of Summer’, Wonderland was changing. Nature had begun to shift and rise, embracing her inhabitants with outstretched arms of ivy and a suffocating cloak of fauna. She has always been a silent part of every picture, an unspoken guardian leading each character along their path of wild flowers, snow and golden leaves. She is all things: a shape-shifting backdrop of seasons and skies, and if I am honest throughout all of this she has been the silent metaphor for my mother. The landscape is my comfort; it is what soothes me when I miss her. From the very first shoot we often joked that my mother was part of the team. I would say, ‘She does the weather,’ and I’d put my trust in whatever she gave us. This energy I feel in the woodlands is personal and indescribable but above all it is home to me. It is a deep love.

It was this bond that I wanted to bring to the forefront of the story and address in Katie’s closing sequence of pictures. ‘The Secret Locked in the Roots of a Kingdom’ was intended as the scene in which nature reveals herself to Katie as her guardian. In this private moment the flowers whisper a secret to her of a hidden place that waits deep in the woods. As the tale is told, their vines entwine her form with a coat of the finest petals for the journey that lies ahead. The flowers will guide her along her final path, their knowledge forming tendrils that pierce her mouth as ‘The Pure Blood of a Blossom’ seeps into her heart.

Close up cropped section of ‘The Secret Locked In The Roots Of A Kingdom’

‘The Pure Blood Of A Blossom’

Close up eye detail

Inspiration

(33 years later) My photograph beside the original illustrations by Errol Le Cain

During the past weeks, whilst working on the pictures I have constantly found myself thinking about the language of flowers, secrets, and the darker undertones of the stories that my mother had read to me. I never wish to be seen as someone who produces ‘pretty’ images; my work will always have a melancholic or darker edge to it than may at first appear. I feel that in life, beauty and decay are intrinsic, and this is probably why I am so fascinated with nature. The sense of a journey through seasons has always been at the heart of Wonderland and these pictures are a direct link to one of my favourite childhood stories, The Snow Queen, specifically, the 1981 edition illustrated by Errol Le Cain. Throughout the tale, the little girl Gerda is guided by nature to find her missing friend Kaye who was kidnapped by the queen. She listens to the voices of the wind, the water and most importantly the flowers, who use their roots to speak to their cousins in distant parts of the kingdom. Gerda’s relationship with the earth had always been on my mind and the book’s descriptions of roses growing around her window became a symbol of home. So when I dug out my original copy of the story this week, I suddenly found myself a little lost for words. As I placed a test print of my finished picture alongside an illustration of Gerda and her flowers, a shiver ran through me. The colours matched perfectly: the purples, green and corals, there was even a relationship between the shape of her face, and her exaggerated eye drawn in soft mauve. The way the green earth was studded with peach roses surrounding the characters took my breath away. It was as if it had all been planned, but it hadn’t, at least not consciously. I hadn’t opened that book for at least four years and now I simply can’t stop looking at the two together as a pair. It is hard to explain the fondness I feel for them, but it is as if a gap in time momentarily closed. It recalls vivid memories of my mother turning the pages as she read to me, her voice, her warmth; it fills me with happiness and heartbreak all at once. I am moved that over thirty years later, they strangely work beside each other. It is an unnerving mix of emotion that makes we wish I could run to her like a child and show her what I have made.

Costume

Making The Costume

Adding vintage silk flowers to the base of the wig

Katie’s coat of flowers and wig being made in my studio  (unfinished)

Katie’s costume for this scene is probably the most beautifully made and refined of all the outfits in the series. I absolutely love every part of it and I now have the wig and coat on display in my studio, which makes me smile every morning when I arrive. I have never made a wig before and confess I had no idea what I was doing but now it is complete I know this is something I want to continue practicing in the future. Both pieces feel like a huge progression for me, and I adored every tiny stage of their development

Shoot Day

The shoot was nothing like the huge production of my previous entry, but even so it was still stressful in a different kind of way. The day before my car had broken down so I was forced to collect the ivy I needed by bike and on foot, dragging sack-loads from my local woods back through the streets to my home. I worked non-stop into the evening, spending a further three hours cutting and sizing leaves from the trees in my garden to create the backdrop and base of the picture and by sundown I was utterly exhausted. I eventually hauled my bounty down the road with scratched muddy arms to the studio and began building the set. As midnight approached I was only half ready; I went home and slept for a few hours and then set out again at three in the morning to cut the flowers. Hollyhocks are flowers I have wanted to use for many years – they grow to extraordinary heights, like great spears
of colour with strange bulbous pods that knot at the stem. If you are lucky they can be found growing wild. I managed to cut bundles from the roadside in my village, as well as a few unusual Acanthus blooms known as ‘Bear’s Breeches’ that I discovered growing on a building site, of all places. These are officially my favourite flowers now; I have never seen anything like them before and they look incredible in the final mage.

By five in the morning I crawled back to the studio, placed the flowers in pots of water and fell asleep on the sofa for a few hours before Katie, Richard and Elbie arrived.

When I awoke, the leaves I had cut the night before were already beginning to curl and the hollyhocks were starting to droop in the July heat. It took five stressful hours to prepare Katie and finish the set, simply because almost every part of the foliage and costume were woven together with threads and pins. It was extremely static: Katie was only able to sit in one pose and was immovable for the entire shoot. All the curved waves you see in the pale ivy that echo the shape of the hair are real and not manipulated in post-production. Wires were bent into shape and tied to the frame in order to control their form. The wig was also impossible to support naturally, so it had to be tied to the ceiling beam above the set and then threaded into the leaves. It was a ridiculous set-up, but the results were quite astonishing. Once everything was in position I couldn’t help but jump from one foot to another in sheer excitement. It was such a beautiful sight, far more magical than I had ever imagined possible. Elbie was squealing (as usual) and Richard couldn’t stop grinning as he filmed the final wide shot of Katie in full character. She looked so amazing I had to cover my gasping mouth in delight. If I’m honest I feel it is one of the best portraits I have ever taken and I am now incredibly proud of it.