Margot Wallard: Natten

Margot Wallard’s photographic project Natten is a heartfelt response to, and an attempt to bridge, a massive chasm between the inner places of her emotional and psychological being.

In 2012 Margot Wallard moved to Sweden with her partner, the photographer JH Engström, to a hamlet in the back of beyond. Experiencing an overwhelming need to turn the lens on herself, she took refuge in nature and started a new project Natten. The forest became a place of resistance, somewhere where she could give free rein to that part of herself that does not cheat. Long exposures gave the shutter sufficient time to etch onto the film the movements of the soul. Besides being her own model, she scanned the things around her – animal, vegetable or mineral. By using the means of recording reality in its purest expression, she found a different way of coming to grips with it. The space she leaves between the camera and herself is also the space she puts between the spectator and her image. The project was exhibited in Landskrona Foto Festival, Sweden and also shortlisted for The Source-Cord Prize in 2014.