Words & Images by Andie Wilkinson

Interview by Hannah Roberts

How did your series Close to Home/ Autumn come to be?

We had moved to the South West of France from the UK and were busy renovating a house in a remote farming community.With three small children in tow I had little time to be making work outside of this environment, so, I started photographing our home ,our village and the family as we embraced our rural surroundings and the changing of the seasons.As the series progressed I became most interested in the Autumn pictures, feeling they conveyed something else beyond our personal story in this beautiful place, a kind of suspension of time and foreboding sense of loss.It was a wonderful time in many ways but my mother was terminally ill and with hindsight I see that the difficult truth of her leaving is deeply embedded in these photographs.

Describe your creative process in one word.

Visceral

If you could teach a one- hour class on anything, what would it be?

Self acceptance, (flaws and all) ,to take the whole with you when making work.I think it yields more honest and relatable content. Or drawing. It’s interesting to slow right down and really look long and hard at something or someone, to get into detail and form. I find that with physical mark making a place or person enters the psyche in a different way to photography.

What inspires you to pursue image-making?

Other peoples work, too many to list. Trying to stay open and receptive and to be a kind of conduit, to render something tangible that was experienced perhaps fleetingly,but was felt if not fully understood.

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

The poetry of Linda Gregg strikes a deep chord right now. I have her retrospective, All of it Singing. I feel it’s somehow close to the source, at once radiant,vulnerable ,violent,mysterious,eternal. I could go on and on with adjectives but in short it puts me in a good space to make work. I also really enjoyed the documentary/autobiography’ Varda by Agnes’ (2019) A warm an charming insight into her life and work.

What advice would you give to people just starting out in photography?

I would say, Don’t overthink it.Just make a start, anywhere, but preferably something you care about. Trust your instincts and let it build organically, you can figure out what you’ve been doing later. Also learn the technical side of your craft, it will free you, put the hours in and don’t give up, things rarely work out straight away.