Black waves lapped up against ageing concrete, its taught skin cold and cracked with winter. Inside the fire was burning a slow and aching heat onto the wooden walls. Sending a laugh into the icy air was a swimmer, her hands clutching at the ladder to pull her from the mouth of sloshing water and onto dry land.

In this article I have written for The Lissome magazine, I reflect upon how our inner and outer worlds are connected, how our intentional experiences within our body house can actively influence how we make relationships with space and become more acutely attuned with our surroundings.⁠ Both the photographs and writing explore themes of home as seen through the body.

We met in Berlin in black and white.
Or was it at four years old as we stood in a circle and sung to you.
Your tune was always lilting, but the words were like percussion,
Sounding without meaning.
I met you, not knowing you would become my home.

I certainly did not anticipate having such a close experience with death. I would have preferred watching it from afar, simply evoking its role as an inspiration in a painting or recognising it in a book. Much like the waves that rush towards the shore in complete abandon, so I got caught in the crux of it, having to soak and mold into its every crevice.

Sometimes we miss the things that never really belonged to us to start with. The grandfather we never met, the snowy winters we weren’t yet alive to see, the countries we never visited but that turn up in family stories told late at night over a glass of red wine.

On the watery Pisces new moon, RNR Creative published our collaboration which showcases my photographs and writing around the idea of a ‘body house’. This project has been a labour of love since I moved to Cornwall in September 2018 and fell in love with the connection between people and the wild land there.