Anthology of Rural Life: Farmers of the Lizard

Exploring rural experience within a shifting economic, social and cultural climate

Project title: Anthology of Rural Life: Farmers of the Lizard

Funded by: Kestle Barton Art Gallery, University of Plymouth and Falmouth University

Funding amount: £6,000

Location: Kestle Barton Art Gallery, Cornwall

Project duration: 15 June – 1 September 2024

University of Plymouth PI:

Mr Colin Robins

Project partner: Oliver Udy, Falmouth University

The Anthology of Rural Life is a long-term photographic project by photographers Colin Robins and Oliver Udy. Originating in Cornwall, where both photographers are based, the project has expanded to include diverse communities throughout rural Europe. So far, these have included regions in Finland, Italy, Poland, Hungary and Turkey, and the West Midlands in the UK. The project will be archived at the Cornwall County archive, Kresen Kernow in Redruth.

Project objectives

This project explores ideas related to the sense of both individual and collective rural experience within a shifting economic, social, and cultural climate. The people and places in the images represent a contemporary rural society where, for example, changes to the nature of work and the increasing economic importance of leisure, culture and the arts mean that traditional ways of life in the countryside are slowly evolving.

In 2023, Kestle Barton Art Gallery commissioned a new body of work which documented contemporary farming on the Lizard in Cornwall. The resulting work was exhibited alongside examples of the European studies at the gallery during the summer of 2024. The exhibition was supported by a two-day symposium which featured an emphasis on current issues surrounding sustainable food production as well as presenting work by other photographers whose practice is orientated around the land.

The event was an acknowledgement of the vital necessity of farming to our lives, as well as a wish to explore some of the nuances and complexities around the relationship between farming and other uses of land. Recognising that land use is a sensitive as well as complex subject – encompassing apparently rival demands for food production, restoration of natural habitats, leisure and building sites – speakers offered a range of perspectives and solutions but they did not comprise a fully comprehensive line-up; nor did they reflect everybody's position on these issues.

Exploring rural experiences

Emerging patterns of diversification exist in many farming communities where we've worked.

In Lizard, these are clearly manifested in initiatives such as the growth of regenerative and organic modes of farming, shifts from crop production to horticulture, and the subsidisation of farming through tourism and farm shops.

Significantly, we encountered migrant workers highly embedded within the rural economy; Central Europeans (Poles, Lithuanians, and Latvians) work the fields of the Lizard, as Ukrainians do in Poland, and people from Turkmenistan in Turkey.

Our conversations with the farmers voiced speculation on whether the land will continue to be agriculturally productive or move further towards widespread adoption of governmentally driven environmental schemes.

There is an uncertainty in the possibility of seeing, as someone put it, "trees planted where crops once thrived, land 're-wilded' where animals used to graze". Others mentioned that they saw the future in terms of a transition towards the 'natural potential' of the land to generate profitability, with a wider range of crops in rotation and a higher focus on soil management.

A steadfast belief that smaller family-run farms will 'weather the storm' runs parallel to the potential increased involvement of large organisations, such as the National Trust, Natural England and Cornwall Wildlife Trust.

Robins and Udy's project overlaps with disciplines of photographic anthropology, cultural geography and rural sociology. Their work can be situated more specifically within a distinguished history of comparable photographic projects that combine the visual language of artistic practice with the remit of an investigative survey. They describe what they do as 'gently mapping' a place and its inhabitants. The result avoids agrarian romanticism and rural heroism. Rather, it provides an understated, descriptive emphasis on individuals and specific sites.

Martin Barnes
Senior Curator of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum

Project media highlights

Land Water Research Group

The Land Water Research Group is a collective of international academic researchers specialising in art, design, architecture, and built environment practices. We adopt interdisciplinary methods to explore diverse creative and critical practices. The research group serves as a platform for dialogue and exchange of ideas concerning nature, culture, aesthetics, and the representation of land, landscape, and place.

The group fosters critical engagement and reflection on environmental issues and climate change. We aim to develop future projects, such as exhibitions, publications, and collaborative research proposals.

Find out more about the Land Water Research Group