Ampleforth's West End from Knoll Hill © Lucy Saggers
We’re delighted to introduce you to Lucy Saggers, the winner of the Shutter Hub Portfolio Award at FORMAT 2025.
Shutter Hub Creative Director, Karen Harvey, selected Lucy’s portfolio, including the images showcased here, which explores themes of community, belonging and the passage of time through a single, ancient, deeply rural English landscape.
Rose Cottage © Lucy Saggers
I was delighted to have the chance to meet Karen Harvey at FORMAT25. Having heard and read about Shutter Hub over the years, my impression was of a particularly warm and supportive organisation and my portfolio review time with Karen did not disappoint – it was like a welcome embrace. How perfect for a first review on a first ever day of reviews. Then to get to the end of the day and hear I had won the Shutter Hub FORMAT25 Portfolio Award… it was like the best icing on an already great cake.
My project, At the Still Point of the Turning World, explores themes of community, belonging and the passage of time through a single, ancient, deeply rural English landscape. Photographed in their homes, portraits capture some of the longest-term residents of Ampleforth, a small village on the edge of England’s North York Moors. The village has been my family’s home for twenty years. Long-time locals are portrayed with vintage wallpaper images, evoking a timelessness that may stir our own memories, inviting us to consider an under-represented and stereotyped age group – one that we all hope to belong to – and offer perspective on our own place in this world.
Interwoven portraits, landscapes, still lifes, oral histories and archive pictures take us from high on the hillside into the homes where stories that have shaped these residents begin to unfold. Betty lived at Rose Cottage for 69 years, having moved to the village to work as a milk maid on her uncle’s dairy farm, delivering milk by horse and cart. She speaks of her precious, ornamental lion – the female having been destroyed in the bomb attack during WWII. Jean, born in the village in 1923, lives in the house her parents built next door to their grocery shop. We see her as a young girl on a rocking-horse with her father and sister, and meet her beloved teddy ‘May’ who went with her ‘wherever we possibly could’. Lastly, we meet the photographer reflected on the curtain hanging in Jean’s long-disused grocery shop window.
“At the still point of the turning world. …
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance. And there is only the dance.”
T S Eliot, 1936
Betty at Rose Cottage © Lucy Saggers
Betty’s Lion © Lucy Saggers
Jean © Lucy Saggers
Jean with her father and sister around 1926 © Lucy Saggers
May © Lucy Saggers
The photographer in Jean’s disused grocery shop window © Lucy Saggers
Old Village Quarry © Lucy Saggers
I am extremely grateful to: Arts Council England for a DYCP grant allowing me time, mentoring and training to undertake the work that has evolved into this project; North Yorkshire County Records Office for their support and collaboration; the Artists Information Company for a bursary to attend FORMAT25 Portfolio Reviews. And, of course, my huge thanks for the Shutter Hub FORMAT25 Portfolio Award.
See more of Lucy’s work on her website.
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