Interview: Esther May Campbell

Over four days at the end of this week (Sept 28-Oct 1) at Elm Tree Farm in Stapleton, Bristol artist/filmmaker Esther May Campbell exhibits a series of beautiful black and white photographs that “tenderly pick their way through the special natures that exists at this magical place – a farm that works with flora, fauna, volunteers, carers and adults with learning disabilities”.
Here’s Esther to tell us more.

During my time directing for television and film, I lost great loves and in my grief I took to taking photographs like I used to as a teenager. It helped calm the moment, trace the subtleties of light – and ensure that life would somehow not slip by too fast.

Away from large crews and demanding schedules, I went walking the dog with my best friend who told me stories of a farm in Stapleton where he worked with adults with learning disabilities. I went to visit and I was moved by so much of what I came to know there.

With a battered old camera I began at Elm Tree in the spring, when orphaned lambs came to be reared.

Over my year here, I watched nine piglets tumble into the world, vegetables harvest and blossoms bloom by the sounds of the nearby M32. I felt the coldness of mud on site, the dark days of winter and the sheer rush and busyness of the summer months.

I photographed a dove dancing in the air above a pig – and witnessed the giant affection animals had for their humans, and vice versa. Whisper the dog levitated in the barn, and one afternoon I witnessed the dying last breath of a hen-pecked chicken. I felt the comfort of returning to conversations with people weeks later, picked up just where we had left them – like the watering cans on site.

I looked through my lens and saw the faces of movie stars and farmers, bathed in light and purpose. I felt mixed emotions spill into fence-building or weeding, across to one another. I was taken by one of the older men whose history in social care follows him like a ghost, but whose heartfelt hugs warmed me as he whispered into my ear “I’m in a good mood today”.

I came to know the care staff, who are not just farmers and growers, but here for whatever the people they support need them for. I saw their generosity and patience. All this wonder and graft on a working farm.

And there is graft. Whatever the weather, the salad needs watering on Monday for picking on Tuesday to go to market on Wednesday. And so it goes. Time flew and a year later the new lambs arrive. Now I sit in the pen with my friends and the little lambs, chatting while photographing and delighting in their nibbling curiosity.

During my visits, I was simultaneously working on a commission: a script for the British Film Institute, which meant periods of time on my own in front of a screen. And I yearned for the company of the people and animals and weather at the farm.

I’d look forward to my visits, cycling back across the city park to watch fires and rain on greenhouses, and to hear the community’s worries and joys. But mostly I came to realise how those who are normally cared for here become carers themselves – for the land, animals, plants and one another. When I had to return to my script, I felt that the farm had revealed to me the transformative possibilities of care and mutual support.

Tending, it seems to me now, is a way of being with the alarming times we are in. Times my script explores. In navigating the precarious terrain of economic and environmental collapse, radical tending is a path through. As I pointed my camera at Elm Tree, the farm presented me with a map in return.

Esther May Campbell’s exhibition Water Salad On Monday is on show at Elm Tree Farm, Stapleton from Sept 28-Oct 1. For more info, visit www.elmtreefarm.org/photographic-exhibition