Back to 4Talent ANASTASIA TAYLOR-LIND
Not many young English women can say that they've travelled to the frontline of the Turkish/Kurdistan conflict, living with and documenting young women guerrilla fighters. 26-year-old photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind always seemed to know that she would be among those few.
Anastasia's passion for adventure and travel ensured that she would never lead an ordinary professional life - she just first needed to figure out the 'how'. When advised in secondary school to look into documentary photography, she knew she had found her calling - all it took was a suggestion and Don McCullin. "I saw a Don McCullin book; the one on Vietnam," she recalls, "and I thought, how do I do this?" And with little photographic experience, Anastasia applied to the documentary photography course at the University of Wales, Newport and got in on sheer passion and desperation.
Anastasia grew up in Devon with her parents, who were not exactly what you would describe as conventional. She spent the early years of her life travelling around Britain in a horse-drawn gypsy wagon and didn't live in an actual house until she was 14. In the '70s her parents travelled from India back to London, passing through the Kurdistan region, on a mere 50 pence. Their appreciation for Kurdistan and Kurdish culture was passed on to Anastasia - who, as a result, didn't have to agonise over choosing a subject for her final-year project.
When she was 22, Anastasia visited the Kurdistan region for the first time. She travelled there alone and lived amongst the Peshmerga Force for Women, Kurdish guerrilla fighters in Northern Iraq - one of her medium-format portraits from this series won her the Guardian Weekend Photography Prize in 2006. More recently, Anastasia has turned her lens to the women fighters of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party, that have been engaged in a decades-long battle with Turkish forces.
This fascination with documenting women within ranks stems from her own time spent as an officer cadet in the University of Wales Air Squadron from the age of 22. The gender inequality she observed here "made me feel uncomfortable." That, and the fact that "I would be cutting out the competition" - namely male photojournalists who would not be allowed to live with the female guerrillas.
Her work from the PKK series is reminiscent of utopian lifestyles, yet the subtlety of her images depict the resistance behind the femininity. The access afforded to her, being both a woman and used to this rustic lifestyle, makes the series an intimate portrayal of women who are considered by many Western states to be nothing more than Kalashnikov-wielding terrorists.
Subverting this stereotype is one of the objectives of her work. And with her determination in sticking with subjects - she would ideally like to go back to the same PKK camp once a year for ten years, because "it just has to be the right story" - Anastasia will no doubt one day receive due recognition for this work.
As for future projects, she plans on focusing her efforts closer to home, yet keeping within the subject of the armed forces, in particular the cost of the Iraq war in the UK in its treatment of injured ex-servicemen. But don't expect this to be a quiet, optimistic look at the situation. She will be the first to say, "I happen to be particularly opinionated and became a documentary photographer so I can express my views on the world."
CONTACTS
www.anastasiataylorlind.com
anastasiataylorlind@hotmail.com
Judge: Lauren Heinz, editor EI8HT Magazine
Top portrait: Ivor Prickett
Anastasia was one of 20 4Talent Award winners in 2007, our hotly tipped young creatives to watch, to hire and to collaborate with. To meet the other 19 click here
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