Fiona Campbell

Photographer / Artist

I’ve been making photographs for more than 40 years, starting as a teenager growing up in rural Devon, inspired by the countryside around me.

In the early 1990s, I moved to New York’s Hudson Valley, where the landscape and the area’s long connection with artists and photographers opened up a much wider world of photography to me. I studied photography there, learning about its history and many different styles, as well as the analogue processes involved in making an image. I spent many happy hours in the darkroom, fascinated by the whole process of making an image rather than simply taking one. By then, photography had become an important part of my life.

Over the years, I’ve photographed all sorts of things, from portraits and street photography to landscapes and album artwork. This was despite an art teacher once telling me I had little chance of passing my Art O-level! Mostly, though, I’ve just always been the one with a camera, photographing whatever caught my attention.

I eventually returned to Devon, where I now live and work.

My work is held in private collections in the UK and United States. In 2022, I was awarded Best Digital Practice at the Riviera Winter Open at Artizan Gallery.

The Process

This collection of botanical photographs began during the first national lockdown in the spring of 2020, when my daily walks became more important than ever. What surprised me was that, despite walking the same paths day after day, there was always something new to notice.

I began bringing home bits of foliage from my walks and they became the focus of a new photographic project. Inspired in part by botanical collections I had seen preserved in museums, I built a flower press and began pressing what I collected. After a few weeks, I found the plants had been transformed into delicate, flattened forms quite different from the ones I had picked up.

Photographing them against a white background took that transformation a step further. Removed from their surroundings, they became simpler and more graphic, drawing attention to their shapes, colours and smallest details - more like botanical illustrations than living plants.

What started almost by accident has continued to evolve. I’m not looking for perfect botanical specimens; I often find the faded, damaged and weathered ones much more interesting, and there’s always something new to notice.

The plants I photograph are gathered locally and responsibly, mostly in and around Devon.