‘Last Summer’ is an ongoing body of work informed by my experience of being childless not by choice. I am altered through the act of photographing and the photographs in turn track the shifts in my perspective over time. The work began on North Island, New Zealand in 2017 and continues in Cornwall, UK.

In New Zealand I was moved to photograph a family group at the edge of a natural rockpool. They were shading their eyes from the sun to see a camera drone overhead. I was captivated by this unifying gesture. As I took the picture I realised that it was the first time in many years I had 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’ from ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ Rebecca Solnit.

These locations & the action of photographing create a sense of connection to the strangers & scenes that unfold in front of me. I am seeking to hold both a sense of distance and tenderness in the work. In photographing from a position of longing and desire the work provides a platform for sharing around this underrepresented life experience which impacts across ages and cultures.

‘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 project, 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.’