Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Wallace.
Hi Rachel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I started photographing from a very young age – in the late 1960s. My father showed me how to develop the films in our attic. I still have my first prints – the same size as the negatives as we didn’t have an enlarger. I always had a camera with me, I loved how you could freeze and capture a moment in time and keep something forever, long past its disappearance from our world and time. I learnt to develop and print while in Paris as an au pair and went on to produce the publicity photos for my Drama degree course at University in Wales, UK. I studied for photography qualifications when my youngest child was two years old, did a Post Grad in Photography when she was ten and finally took a Master’s five years ago in Photography Art.
Photography for me is a way of expressing myself and making sense of the world we live in. I financed my education and equipment by doing commercial work – weddings, portraits, and product shoots but my love of land and landscape always shone through. Now I have a small studio in the Chiltern Hills in Oxfordshire UK where I exhibit and sell my work inspired by and illustrating the connections between the lifecycles of ourselves and the natural world and mentor other aspiring photographers.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Life never runs smoothly.
As an Art Photographer getting established and known in a competitive world is hard. Photographers tend to work in isolation and need the skills to run a business as well as do the work for and within that business. This means managing accounts, marketing and now organizing social media as well as actually doing the work!
As cameras became more automated and phone cameras came along people’s need for photographers became fewer as the average person felt they could do it themselves and work has become harder to find.
During lockdown, many photographers struggled. I had just begun a body of work photographing teenagers at home and this had to come to an abrupt halt.
So I began a series of still lives created from natural objects I found on my walks.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My photography is my language. If you understand my work then you’ll understand me! My practice concerns itself in the interplay between ourselves, land and nature addressing the issues of life, death, and decay. My instinctive reaction to our interlinking life cycles with the natural world is often described as a delicate and poetic.
I am also known for being a funeral photographer which is something I started in 2008 as I felt there was a need for photographs of these occasions as an aid to grief. I make memory books for the bereaved who can show and share them with others, enabling them to talk about their loss.
My personal work uses elements I see and find all around me as I walk in the English countryside, But you won’t necessarily find traditional and pretty landscapes from my camera. I photograph details and moods. Death and decay. I create still lives from the found objects I gather on my walks. I confront death and try to take away its ‘sting’. When my mother died, I used photography to help me through my own grieving process. I still do.
I am incredibly proud of the awards I have gained over the years from the Royal Photographic Society and the Royal Horticultural Society.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
Climbing trees.
Pricing:
- Prices range from £45 to around £175 for a framed original print in an edition of 5
Contact Info:
- Website: www.racheljwallace.com
- Instagram: @racheljayw
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.wallace.3998/
Image Credits
Rachel Wallace
