A smattering of natural tones, a lush green forest, the brown-red autumn leaves, the earth beneath our feet, textured and tried through centuries, through millennial she has known the footsteps of many different animals and many different people, she has grown and nurtured forests, she has fed and homed countless creatures. But how long before men and their greed consume rather than cultivate all her abundant gifts?
Lexi Hide is an analogue photographer whose practice is firmly rooted in her eco-feminist philosophy. A philosophy and political ecology that examines the manner in which both womxn and nature are treated and the ways in which patriarchal gender norms lead to the suppression and unjust dominance of both womxn and nature by men.
In her interview with The Cape Creative Collective, she mentions as much, “My work is inspired by the connection I feel between my internal and external worlds. I try to convey this synchronicity by alluding to the ideologies of eco-feminism. My photography is about rejection, and return. I attempt to capture the immaculateness of the female spirit without patriarchal influence by conveying a naïve tenderness for the natural world.”
What becomes apparent when getting lost in the beautiful imagery that Lexi creates, at least to me, is this sense that she has not only painstakingly created a single image but that this image forms part of a wider world, a living, breathing world that at first, I thought must be a fictionalised place, at an undisclosed time. The world seemed so ideal, so perfectly soft and tender, so untouched, unspoiled, considered and cared for that it wouldn’t seem out of place if the description of the engaging elements of each image appeared in purposeful poetic language in a beautiful piece of fiction.
“It’s a world full of friendship and play. I think my work is trying to preserve my own sense of nativity and girlhood, so I remember what that feeling is. I think it’s something to be preserved and encouraged.” This element of play is also present in how she goes about her image-making process, often asking the subjects of her photos to get into some peculiar albeit perfect scenes. “The process of making my pictures is fun (for me, at least) – my subjects often have to do very uncomfortable things while I laugh at how ridiculous the situation is and direct them into perilous lakes or cover them in bugs or bury them alive. But we go out to a park or somewhere else obscure I have found, and make a nice picture, always with friends.”
Although the scenes and situations seem pretty ridiculous on set, Lexi underplays one of the strongest elements of her work. It’s hard to place the type of photography she is presenting simply because she is so masterful in blending elements of portraiture and landscape photography all into one. What gets me so lost in her images isn’t necessarily the beautiful tones or even the fantastic compositions; it’s this blending phenomenon. Every element, from shrubbery to flesh and bone, just blend into one sense of being. My eyes are never drawn to only one element of an image but rather to the image as a whole, simply because very rarely does one piece overpower the other. It’s fitting, isn’t it, that in the world she has created, I get a sense that the humans present in the images are there to care for and cultivate the naturalistic elements they are surrounded by rather than exploit and destroy them.
I even asked Lexi about this very thought. In my mind, this world had to be one in which men never existed, or it had to be a kind of post-men scenario. I thought it came across as too ideal for there to be men present. Maybe it was because I believed her work to be rooted in a fantasy world created and painstakingly curated, but her creations are very much set in reality. “I think in the world I have created, there are men – they just aren’t bothering us. Like I said, my photos are about girlhood and female friendship – so that’s what I like to focus on, my experience”. But I guess this says more about me and my grievances with my own gender than anything else.
The last element of Lexi’s work I want to talk about is her preferred medium, 120mm (medium format) film. Even this element of her workflow and process seemingly perfectly fits her philosophy and practice. What film and particularly medium format film photography, forces you to do is slow down. The process simply takes longer and depending on the form factor, you could have as little as ten shots per roll (6×7) to work with you. I think that medium format is perfect for her work in a number of ways. First, we can just mention the sheer amount of detail you can capture on medium-format cameras. Although I said that I see her images more as a whole than focussing on one element, that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting and intricate little details for you to lose yourself in all over again.
Secondly, I think the longer process actually really suits the subject matter she shoots. “I never take pictures randomly, I often come up with ideas via reference or just seeing somewhere and take a couple of weeks or months to finally execute. It is a very slow process – mostly consisting of thinking about pictures – but it is just the way I work.” Maybe I’m being too poetic and romantic about it. Still, considering the ecological connection of her work, I do love the idea that in the grander scheme of things, months may seem like a long time for the human elements of the images, but what is a few months to the earth herself that has been floating around for some 4.5 billion years.
I’ve been reading many novels in which authors and sometimes even characters create worlds, these beautiful, expansive spaces that are, for the most part, better than the realities they or we live in. So I really do hope that somewhere down the line, this world that Lexi has taken her time and care to craft and create can take shape not just as a utopian fantasy but rather as a lived reality.
