19/11/2025
How socially engaged photography helps communities explore their relationships with nature?
Socially engaged photographers Fiona Robinson, Anoosh Ariamehr and Liz Lock have been selected to work regularly at RHS Garden Bridgewater with different groups from the Salford community.
Fiona Robinson works with the regular group of individuals who have been prescribed a series of therapeutic gardening sessions:
The group come for a therapeutic gardening session, so the sessions are really varied. They may be planting, harvesting or watering in the Wellbeing garden. We also have regular walks through the rest of the RHS site.
🌿 Full article: https://openeye.org.uk/offshoot-sep-communities/
The photography activities are there to enhance this, so we may do a short photowalk exploring with cameras and mobile phones. We’ve also done some cameraless photographs using plant material from the garden (anthotype and cyanotype). There is always plenty of time for people to chat and enjoy the gardens and drink fresh herbal tea.
I’ve also found some fabulous new plants for making anthotype images. This is a technique where the petals of flowers are ground to extract the pigment and then painted onto paper. This is exposed to sunlight (usually for several days/weeks) to create images.
As for the advice for people who are interested in photography as a way of exploring connections with nature, plants, places. Most importantly, just get outside and take some time to look carefully. Any camera or phone will make images – but it’s often more interesting to look at things from above or below rather than at usual eye level.
Images by Fiona Robertson.
