VISUAL

FALL 2026

Sandra Jordan

Whilst caring for my father during his terminal illness, and following his death, I found myself returning again and again to the same local woodlands. What began as a way to escape the practical demands of caregiving and the ensuing grief gradually became a quiet ritual of walking, observing and returning.

Heartsarnes brings together photographs and text created during these repeated journeys through the woods. The work follows familiar paths through the seasons, recording not a single event but an accumulation of small encounters. The landscape became a place of refuge and reflection, while the simple act of walking provided structure when much else felt uncertain. Repeated routes, recurring trees and shifting weather became markers of time passing and reminders that change, renewal and decay exist side by side.

Nine years after my father's death, I returned to one of these woodlands and found myself walking the same paths once again. The grief was no longer as immediate or all-consuming, but the ritual of returning remained. These later photographs sit alongside the earlier work as a reminder that grief does not simply end; it changes shape, resurfacing in moments and places, while familiar acts of walking, looking and remembering continue to connect us to those we have lost.

At its heart, Heartsarnes is about the rituals we create to help us navigate difficult periods of life. It considers how repeated acts of looking, walking and noticing can become forms of care, tethering us to place, season and memory. Through image and text, the work reflects on the quiet ways nature can hold us and accompany us through loss, offering not answers or resolution, but space for what needs to be felt.

Sandra Jordan

Sandra Jordan is an award-winning !ne art photographer, known for her minimalist photographic meditations on transience, quietude, and the intrinsic beauty of the natural world. Her work has been exhibited at the London Art Fair and featured in The Guardian and Professional Photography Magazine. She has produced three photographic books: Adfectus: An Exploration of Life and How We Fit Into the World; U N I T, a study of modernist and brutalist architecture; and, most recently, Heartsarnes, a reflection on grief, memory and the solace found in nature. She has photographed extensively in the Arctic, including whilst working as an Expedition Photographer for Hurtigruten in Svalbard. Her work is held in private collections across the UK, Europe and North America.