Last Summer photographs strangers with young children, approached through a shared love of the sea. The series began at Mermaid’s Pool on North Island, New Zealand in 2017. I took a photo of an extended family group at the water’s edge and realised it was the first time in a long time that I’d been able to look long enough to compose a photograph, rather than look away from a scene I could not recreate in my own life.

‘We treat desire as a problem to be solved… rather than (focus) on the nature and the sensation of desire… often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.’

‘The Blue of Distance’, Rebecca Solnit.

There’s an image of cohabitation present in these scenes, the photographer and subject, groups in different domains as individuals, friends, children and parents. In these photographs the theatre space of the beach and the riverside holds us in a shared love of water; these locations are my connection to a sense of connection to the strangers and scenes in front of me.

‘Stidolph’s repeated exposure to and sharing in the watery landscapes of families at leisure becomes an act of anthropological curiosity – she watches groups interact, registering how they behave individually and together, and also when she is close, how they respond to her and her camera. It is an act of careful circling, waiting, watching, returning, reflecting and re-framing. As open as she is about her personal circumstances, at times, Stidolph pointedly subtracts herself from the work. Even the act of pressing the shutter feels too personal, too deliberate, too charged, too active.’

A body, in parts, interjects, essay by Lizzie Lloyd, for Synesthesia, 2021

A selection from this developing body of work has been featured in NU, a European journal of writing, photography and visual art – www.nureview.org. Stefanie Braun, NU co-editor and previously Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery, and myself were invited to talk about the journal’s theme of ‘Habitat’ by Christiane Monarchi, founding editor, Photomonitor.

Stefanie Braun: ”What I like very much about your images is that the groups you photograph seem on the one hand very composed and directed, as if the rocks or the beach act like a theatre stage, the figures perfectly in harmony with their environment, folded into it nearly.’ 

Last Summer is an ongoing body of work and has been featured in my solo show As It Is Seen at Grays Wharf (2022), the RWA Photo Open (2023) and Manchester Open (2024).