In this article, we share some time with local commercial photographer Sarah Weal about her life and work in Lewes. We are very lucky to have one of her prints of the South Downs taken at Summer Solstice on our Mezzanine level at The Grain Store.

Self portrait by Sarah Weal

Tell us a bit about your background Sarah and how you came to be based in Lewes.

My childhood is a tale of two cities. I grew up with my French mother in Paris but regularly came back to visit my father in North London. They met in 1968 as young Trotskyist Revolutionaries and although they separated when I was 5 they remained great friends. I cultivated a die-hard Londoner persona at my secondary school in France and I was always going to come back to the UK for University. Oddly I ended up in Scotland first, studying Philosophy and Politics at Edinburgh University, before deciding to pursue my first love, photography.

I did a course at the London College of Communications (London College of Printing as it was known then) and started working as a freelance photographer, mostly for magazines. I thought I would stay in London forever. Then my husband and I came to Lewes to visit some old university friends, they took us to the Raft Race and the irreverence of it won us over, by mid-afternoon we had fallen in love with Lewes and on our way home we decided to try and move here.

Tell us about the pros and cons of being a photographer.

The joy is that every day is different. I get to meet all sorts of people in all sorts of settings. I get access to places I might never ordinarily go to. I can be really quite nosey and I have a licence to stare. The downsides are that I have to lug around a lot of heavy kit and I live in fear of technical failure.

The workshop in Luton of a hat blocker, shot for www.thegarnered.com

You've done a lot of work with Makers both in Europe and the USA, tell us a bit about these connections.

Almost all of my early photos of makers were for www.thegarnered.com a website that was started by Anna Garner after she gave up her job as head buyer at Selfridges. On The Garnered she curates the work of artisan makers from around the world and to profile them properly she sends me to their studios all over the UK, France and Upstate New York. I found that I loved photographing in a more reportage style. A studio visit is a great way to meet and connect with someone because we are both in the zone, busy doing what we do, so it is a very gentle, non-invasive process. Once I have been there a while I move on to the more formal portraits, by which time we are usually pretty relaxed around each other.

Of course, one type of work leads to more of the same, so I have since shot 4 books on Makers, most recently the book that will accompany the BBC tv show The Repair Shop.

Alice Blogg, Furniture maker, shot for www.thegarnered.com in her Dorset workshop

Talk to us about your recent inspiring projects.

I am first and foremost a commercial photographer and I actually love the constraint of a commission. However when lockdown happened and all work dried up, I was desperate to photograph people and I also missed my friends and community terribly, so I found myself photographing my friends behind their closed windows in Lewes, I called it Furloughed Friendship given the diminished nature of our interactions.

Furloughed Friendship ended up winning a competition called ‘Studio Lockdown’ and I have just had an exhibition of the work at the Meikeljohn Gallery in Lewes which was sponsored by ‘From Studio Lockdown’ and its patron Elena Gabriele @efgart.

To the right is one of the Portraits from “Furloughed Friendship”. This one made it into The National Portrait Gallery exhibition and competition ‘Hold Still’.

I also made another series that summer that I called ‘Flowers of Britain’. It is a series that explored our changing emotional response to the natural world and the NHS over the time of Covid.

I photographed NHS workers in their place of work, each holding a wildflower.

Flowers of Britain became a commission for Tunbridge Wells Hospital and was exhibited there as part of Black History Month in September 2020.

Lastly, I was lucky enough to work with Sonia Boyce, Britain’s entry to the Venice Biennale and as it turns out, the Golden Lion winner.

She made a piece called Feeling Her Way where she asked 5 Black singers to come to Abbey Road Studios and improvise song, whilst being filmed by a multitude of cameras.

I was asked to take stills of the day and then hand over all my images for her to use in the work. She has used my images on the walls of her installation, so I essentially have my photos hanging in the winning entry of the largest art fair in the world.

Completely mind-blowing frankly!

What’s next for you?

I am about to shoot a new book on a ceramicist and I have also been dipping a toe into set photography encouraged by a great friend and brilliant set photographer, Parisa Taghizadeh @parisatag who also lives in Lewes.

Here’s a still taken on set of the forthcoming Drama ‘The Birth of Daniel F Harris’.

I have 10 portraits that will be exhibited as part of a public art exhibition along Seaford Beach. This was commissioned by the Charity SCIP (Seaford Contemporary Illustration and Printmakers)

The show celebrates The Coast and all those who use and maintain it.

It opens end of May and will be up on beacons until Oct 2022.

https://www.wearescip.co.uk/the-beacon-show/

How do people find you?

I spend more time than I should in @fleury_lewes one of the many fantastic shops that this town has to offer (and dangerously close to my front door) but if I’m not there I can be contacted through my website.

www.sarahweal.com or Instagram @sarahweal

Share with us 5 x things you love about Sussex.

The proximity to the Downs/Sea combo is obviously one of the biggest draws for me.
I love that Lewes is geographically compact with the spirit and ambition of a much larger town. If it were a dog it would be a Jack Russell (complete with the bite)
The independent shops and eateries. We need to protect them more than we do. My heart sinks when a new chain opens. People are down on the “string” shops of Lewes, but I’ll take independent string over chain shops.
I love the proximity to France actually. I find it very comforting going for a swim at Tidemills and seeing the Transmanche Ferry.
The People of course. I have met so many interesting people in Lewes (and beyond). I used to be properly brainwashed into thinking that London was the centre of the universe, but it turns out I was 55 miles out.

Discover the historical town of Lewes and this lovely part of East Sussex by booking a break with us at The Grain Store

With the South Downs National Park right on our doorstep, there is plenty to explore for those who love nature & the outdoors.

Click here for our latest prices and availability including some last-minute dates - stay@thegrainstorelewes.com

Article by Pip de Villiers