Hellerau Photography Award 2025: Q&A with Jo Bradford on her solo show at FOTOFORUM Dresden

Jo Bradford's intimate and powerful photographic project, "If Not Now, When," has been awarded the 2025 Solo Satellite Exhibition Prize at the prestigious PORTRAITS - Hellerau Photography Award, through Der Greif's Guest Room curated by Martin Morgenstern, Sandra Buschow, and Christina Töpfer under the evocative theme "Echoes of Truth."

Bradford's work resonates deeply with this theme, exploring personal truth, resilience, and connection amidst the vast wilderness of Dartmoor, where she lives off-grid with her family. Her images traverse the layered landscapes of identity, motherhood, and survival, providing a delicate yet unflinching reflection on her experiences raising children in a remote and challenging environment.

The resulting solo exhibition has been curated by Francesca Hummler, Der Greif's Community Manager and Program Curator. It will take place at FOTOFORUM Dresden, Germany, opening on August 29 at 7:00 pm.

In this Q&A, Hummler and Bradford discuss her unique approach to image-making, the ethical implications of her family-focused practice, and how her low-technology lifestyle intersects with her photographic process. Through her commitment to sustainability, collaboration, and authenticity, Bradford emerges as a witness to her environment and family life as a storyteller whose work echoes universal truths.

Francesca Hummler: Your project, “If Not Now, When,” spans over 14 years. How have you navigated the process of selecting and curating images together with your family, particularly your children, and how do they influence or shape your artistic choices?

Jo Bradford: The process has always been collaborative, even if that was not formalised from the beginning. As my children have grown, their agency in the work has too. They have moved from being passive subjects to active participants, not just in terms of giving consent but in shaping how they are represented. We have spent time revisiting the archive together, talking about what each image means to us now compared to when it was made. That dialogue has helped shape the curation for this show. It has become less about finding the best pictures and more about assembling a constellation of images that speak to our shared truth, with all its messiness and resilience. It also felt right to allow the archive to remain a little unkempt. Not everything needs resolution. What matters is the texture of the choices we made together. The images that stayed did so not because they completed a story but because they felt alive within it. That is how we have come to understand authorship here, as something open and unfinished, shaped in part by time and trust. In my upcoming book, "The Authentic Photographer," I talk at length about the importance of shared authorship, not just technically but emotionally and ethically. That idea underpins this whole body of work.

FH: Your lifestyle involves minimal technology and off-grid living on Dartmoor. How does this intentional simplicity influence your creative process, and what role does photography play in your family’s daily routines?

JB: Living off-grid means my process is slower and more embodied. There is no endless scrolling or fast feedback loop. I work with the weather, with the seasons, and with the rhythms of our days. That simplicity opens up a different kind of attention. Photography becomes less performative and more reflective, a way of being present. It is woven into our life in an organic way, not something that sits outside it. My children see me printing in the darkroom, carrying cameras into the woods, climbing trees to make cameraless images. It is just how we live, not for the sake of making art but because making art is part of how we live. In this way of working, it feels to me that it does not isolate photography from the rest of our lives. It brings it closer to the way we observe and remember. The act of making becomes folded into the everyday. The slower rhythm allows something quieter to rise to the surface, something often missed in faster environments. The creative process becomes an extension of how we move through the world.

FH: Sally Mann famously explored intimate family dynamics through photography, raising questions about ethics and consent. How do you approach the ethical implications of photographing your children, and how has your approach evolved?

JB: Ethics have always been central, but not in a rigid, rule-based way. It is a living conversation. I never publish an image without my children’s knowledge and consent, and I always check in with how they feel about being seen. That means some work has never been shared publicly and never will be. As they have matured, their opinions and boundaries have changed, and I have followed their lead. It has also shaped how I shoot: I am not looking for spectacle or vulnerability. I am looking for connection and truth. That truth includes the right to say no. This has meant learning when to put the camera down and live in the moment. It has also meant paying attention to silence, to hesitation, to unreadiness. That kind of listening creates a different kind of image. The resulting photographs are shaped not only by the children’s permission but also by their presence. Over time, this approach has deepened my understanding of what it means to photograph with someone, not simply of them.

FH: You generously shared your personal experiences with cervical cancer, IVF, and divorce with me as we were discussing how best to present your work. How have these personal challenges informed your visual language and the narrative structure of this body of work?

JB: Those experiences live in the work in quiet ways, not always directly but as an undertow. There is a tenderness and a fragility in the images that comes from having walked through grief and uncertainty. The camera became a way to hold onto something real when everything else felt in flux. The narrative structure is not chronological, because healing and memory are not linear. Instead, the work arcs around themes of holding on and letting go, of making meaning from the fragments. I did not set out to tell a story about illness or loss, but those threads are part of the weave. They are part of the truth that echoes through the pictures. I think of the sequence less as a timeline and more as a rhythm, a cluster of impressions that shape each other in subtle ways. Some images feel like breath, others like pauses. I let the quieter photographs carry as much weight as the more direct ones. They allow the viewer to dwell, not simply read. The emotional shape of the work reveals itself slowly. In the photograph of a back turned to the camera beneath fireworks, I think about the male role in the IVF journey. His presence is there yet undefined, his anonymity set against the burst of light in the night sky. The image speaks to absence and to the unspoken aspects of that process. Another frame shows a small foot protruding from a cupboard during a game of hide and seek. My daughter was born from a donor egg after internal damage from multiple childhood surgeries left me unable to conceive naturally. I wrestle with time and the way it moves through her portrayal in these photographs. She has increasingly become aware of her image and how she chooses to be seen. In earlier pictures, she was a blur, dashing past my lens, or a disembodied limb hidden in a cupboard. These playful moments in my studio and darkroom are now part of our shared history, yet they also mark the passing of time and the shift into a more deliberate presence within the frame.

FH: Your photographs often capture deeply private moments of motherhood. In what ways has motherhood transformed your relationship with photography, and vice versa?

JB: Motherhood shifted everything. It slowed me down, but it also sharpened my focus. Time became more precious and more fragmented. Photography gave me a way to stay grounded through that change. It helped me see the beauty in the small, ordinary moments that might otherwise slip past unnoticed. It also gave me a space to process the emotional labour of caregiving. At the same time, being a photographer made me a more attentive mother. I learned to watch closely, to listen more deeply, to honour the quiet truths. The two roles feed each other, not always easily, but in ways that have shaped both my art and my life. That closeness to the everyday has helped shape a way of working that is responsive rather than directed. I rarely set out to make a particular image. The camera is often already there when something unfolds. That presence becomes a way to honour the moment without needing to define it. The photographs are a kind of response, a way of holding space for something fleeting but felt.In the image of my daughter sitting on her swing after school, her gaze meets mine. I had asked her to look towards me as we spoke about a moment of casual cruelty between two girls in her class, the kind of sharp language that children sometimes borrow from adults or television without understanding the hurt it can cause. We discussed the power of words and the meaning behind the language we choose. She looked to me with such calm intensity for clarification, that I reached for my camera. I wanted to hold onto that, aware that these might be the last moments of her childhood naivety as she moves through her first year of high school and these seismic shifts in her world. My son, who is on the autistic spectrum, appears in a different way. He rarely makes eye contact; something first noticed in early medical assessments for ADHD. Similarly, if asked to look at the camera, he will look just past it. He does not smile automatically when a lens is pointed his way, though he is a cheerful, quick-witted boy. His photographs often show a quieter, more reflective side, which is as much a part of him as his humour. The mirror photograph sits within this same thread of intimacy. My then ten-year-old daughter spent an entire afternoon with me trying to create an image that felt like a portal into another world. As we worked, we spoke about the possibility of other realms and the way imagination can shift our sense of what is real. The final picture holds not only the idea of escape, but also the collaboration and shared play that made it possible.

FH: The Dartmoor landscape is both harsh and beautiful. How does this environment influence your emotional and visual language, and how do your sustainable living and darkroom practices deepen that connection?

JB: Dartmoor is part of me now. It is not just the setting for the work, it is its pulse. The weather, the light, and the wildness all seep into the images. There is a rawness to the moor that mirrors the emotional honesty I try to bring to the work. Living sustainably here forces a kind of humility. I have to listen to the land and work with its limits. My darkroom practice echoes that too, slow, analogue, rooted in process. There is no instant gratification. But that is what gives the work depth. The land teaches patience, and photography becomes a kind of conversation with it. The materials I work with are part of that conversation. I am attentive to what I use and to how the process leaves a trace. That sense of exchange with the land creates a sort of reciprocity. I am not extracting something from Dartmoor. I am listening to what it gives. That shift has altered how I think about both place and practice. My home here is off-grid under a tin roof, three kilometres from the nearest neighbour. It sits in the heart of Dartmoor National Park, a place steeped in history and mythology, where the cycles of life and death are played out in the elemental landscape around me. We live self-sufficiently, keeping our environmental footprint as low as possible. The wild animals in this landscape have become part of my understanding of what it means to belong to a place. I watch wild ponies birth their young in the shelter of my hedgerows and see last year’s lambs grow to be aunts and then mothers within two turns of the sun. The calm, watchful gaze of a Belted Galloway cow or a pregnant mare offers a quiet counterpoint to the climate anxiety and guilt of knowingly raising children in a damaged world. The landscape is also written into the bodies of my children. They have grown up barefoot on these moors, running through mud, feeling it seep between their toes. When they are anxious, I sometimes encourage them to stop and feel the ground beneath their feet, to know the earth is holding them and will not let them fall. This small act has become part of our shared language of grounding. The weather here can be overwhelming. Storms sweep across the high ground, the mist can hide all other life from us and make us feel alone for days on end, the rain falls in sheets, and the wind bends the trees until they almost break. It is a demanding place to keep a life going, but it still charms with its dark skies and moments of sudden stillness. I walk and work through it all, carrying these conditions into the images, letting the land and weather shape the way I see.

FH: You’ve mentioned photography as a tool for healing and resilience. Could you elaborate on how this practice has supported your mental health, and how you see your photography acting as personal documentation and a universal statement of hope?

JB: For me, the healing potential of photography is something I have witnessed again and again, especially when working with young people navigating trauma, neurodiversity, or disadvantage. During the photo walks I have led both in wild countryside and in urban fringe spaces all over the world, I have watched participants, many of whom arrived withdrawn or disconnected, begin to soften. Through the act of framing what they notice, they reclaim agency over their own story. Photography becomes a language where words fail, a way to create a bridge between internal experience and the outside world. That same process grounds me. When life feels fragmented, whether through the usual parenting moments of tiredness and confusion, or the simple weight of caregiving, photography helps me reassemble meaning. It is a form of quiet resistance. A way to say: “This moment mattered. I was here. I saw this.” Over time, those small affirmations build into something communal. The hope is in the accumulation of attentiveness, in the trust that images can hold what is hard to say, and in the invitation they offer to others to do the same. Making photographs has helped me notice where light enters. Sometimes the work is raw. Sometimes it is joyful. But it always comes from a need to understand what I am living through. That same impulse resonates with others. The images invite a kind of shared seeing. Not a spectacle or a solution, but a gesture toward connection. That feels like hope.