Tessa Bunney

For over 25 years, I have photographed rural life, working closely with individuals and communities to investigate how the landscape is shaped by humans. From hill farmers near my home in North Yorkshire to Icelandic puffin hunters, from Finnish ice swimmers to Romanian nomadic shepherds my projects reveal the fascinating intricacies of the dependencies between people, work and the land. I am currently working on Made out of Orchards commissioned by the Martin Parr Foundation and Going to the Sand, an ongoing personal project collaborating with Morecambe Bay fishermen.

My ongoing project FarmerFlorist explores the vibrant local ‘artisan’ cut-flower farms which have recently sprung up in the UK and is a celebration of domestic growers past and present.  It was shown at Ryedale Folk Museum in 2018 and Oriel Colwyn in 2019 and published in Rakes Progress and on the BBC. Another Place Press published FarmerFlorist as part of their Field Notes series in 2020. In 2019 I was commissioned by the North East Photography Network (NEPN) to produce new work about flower farming and technology in Lincolnshire which was exhibited at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens as part of ObserveExperimentArchive.

My project Home Work was published by Dewi Lewis in 2010 and was exhibited and published nationally and internationally including the Land exhibition as part of the Noorderlicht Festival, 2010. Home Work explores the lives of female home workers in the suburbs and villages in and around Hanoi, Vietnam in the face of increasing urbanisation.

Between 2012 and 2016 I was based in Laos where I was working on my long term project The Corridor of Opportunity which was supported by Arts Council England and undertaking editorial and NGO commissions throughout the Southeast Asia region. My series The Women of UCT6 which documents an all female UXO clearance team in Laos was published in the Financial Times Magazine (UK) and  online.

www.tessabunney.co.uk