Seeing the vardos floating along the horizon, cow parsley spilling out of the hedgerows, and horses grazing on verges is a sign of summer’s coming.
The road I live on connects Yorkshire to Cumbria, so from May to June travellers make their way past my window to Appleby Horse Fair. Since 2019 I’ve been setting off on walks, meeting with different families en route to the fair on well-worn rural roads, finding them in lay-bys in bow top wagons, on horseback, or using motor vehicles.
This is how I met Joe out on the moors over three years ago with his horses and wagon. After sharing life stories and cups of tea I kept coming back. Joe would let me know if the weather was fine and if it was a good day to stop by. We talked at length about what his heritage meant to him, his personal history and he showed me family photographs of him as a young lad with his parents’ vargo. He kept me in the loop before his foal, Comet, was born, as he made improvements to his wagon and we’d go for a ride out on his horse and trap. I then started recording through portraits and 8mm vignettes of his daily life over the years.
The first time Joe took me for a ride with his horse and trap, the rural roads were empty. The steady pace of the landscape passing by, you could hear bird song, the sounds of the hooves and wheels on the road. He pointed out buildings that had changed or disappeared, and the traces of old, disused railway lines that connected villages together. He also showed me areas where he used to camp with his family on their way to Appleby in the 1950s, just as he continues to do today. It was the closest I’ve felt to time travel. His history like so many others is etched into this landscape and shouldn’t be forgotten.
Over the years, I’ve been warmly welcomed by other families, sitting with them through all kinds of weather and hearing their lifelong memories of Appleby. Some first-time fair goers and others have described how it feels like a ritual returning every year just as the generations before have.
The ongoing marginalisation of the traveling and Gypsy community with misconceptions and negative media portrayals has strained relationships and hindered the inclusion of these communities in non-traveling environments. Continuing to capture this community, travelling to a historical home, feels more important than ever to preserve the collective strength of their rich ancestral heritage. I will continue to photograph what I see: family, ceremony, gentleness, tradition.
Everything starts with conversation. I never underestimate the intimacy of taking someone’s portrait. Sometimes, people ask me or parents ask me to take group pictures, while other times, I approach them explaining my work and gather contact details to send their photos later.
With an analogue camera, the slower process allows us time together. The best portraits are collaborative, where we decide together what to capture and where. I treat each portrait as if photographing my own family, knowing how meaningful these images become over time with the circle of new arrivals and as loss unfolds.
It’s a privilege to be trusted to tell Joe’s story and to have taken these portraits over the years. The film has had his seal of approval and blessing to travel on.
I deeply respect the community and value documenting its contemporary legacy. This work feels both local and personal to me. Sometimes I feel more like an anthropologist or an archivist than I do a photographer.
I think often about something Joe’s told me: “Don’t forget where you’ve come from and who you are.”
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