In rural Suffolk there is an old monastery on 70 acres of land. In this monastery live around 70 people commune. Families and singles live in units to suit their own needs with shared communal rooms and facilities. They all have to work on the land for a certain amount of hours a week. The cooking rotates and they eat food from their own land. This commune has been around since 1974 and the people who live there go to schools near by, or work in jobs outside the Old Hall.
As we all found ourselves in isolation, this community had isolated themselves as a community. Few people allowed in, and contact with the people outside was done with caution.
As I drove onto the land of Old Hall I see kids running through the fields and playing with the small patches of snow left over from a small snowfall the night before. Adults were gathering outside the kitchen, preparing for lunch. Not much evidence of farming work at that time of year, but a hanger filled with wood showed that there was still work to be done to keep warm. I expected only around 10-15 people to take part in the portrait, but when it was all set up and I had given the “all ready” sign, around 25 people appeared from doors, around corners or from over the distant fields. One boy was determined to hide his face and I pulled out all the stops to make him look.
When the shoot was finished I was given a small box with great tasting carrots and onions, cake and a coffee. I packed up the car and drove off in the direction of the Suffolk sunset….
Shot for The Observer Magazine
