Until relatively recently life in rural England would have been very different from how it is today. Full or partial self-sufficiency would have been common, fixing and re-using would have been a necessity, waste would have been minimal. That is, however, a bygone era. Consumerism obliges us to continually modernise instead of adapting what we already possess or purchasing second-hand. People who do not live like this are unusual.
Diary No.30 explores the realm of place, time, and memory through the life of Nanda: an elderly woman living in a small village in England’s rural South West. Utilising a combination of contemporary and archive imagery, with text taken from audio recordings of dialogue between Nanda and myself, this ongoing body of work attempts to lace together Nanda’s past and present.
The decision to photograph Nanda grew out of a personal fascination with her lifestyle and a growing desire to explore and understand the origins, growth and maturing of her identity.
Holly Passmore is a British photographer based in the South West of England. She is fascinated by cultural variation and the ways in which people live. Her photographic practice frequently examines the relationship between humans and nature and other contemporary social issues which are explored through constructed and documentary approaches to photography. She graduated from the University of Plymouth in 2020 achieving a first class honours degree.