I moved from London to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, in 2006 with very little experience of the country or the African continent. As a foreigner navigating an unfamiliar culture, photography offered me a way to engage with the people and communities around me. I was a journalist at the time, working initially for Zambia’s only independent newspaper and then later as a magazine editor, and I took my camera with me everywhere, documenting all the newness around me. Photography can bridge language and social barriers, and I discovered that with my camera I could enter spaces and connect with people I might not have been able to otherwise. Through the lens, I began to understand Zambia, its customs and people. It’s easy when you move to a foreign country to live in silos, gravitating towards people with similar cultural backgrounds or interests. Photography pushed me out of the comfort of these familiar groups and into the culture of the new country I was living in.
I started taking portraits using old film cameras shortly before lockdown, setting up a darkroom in my studio in Lusaka where I developed my own film and prints. After years of taking only digital photographs, the slower, more deliberate process of film photography appealed to me. There are lots of things to remember when you’re using an analogue camera – loading film, light meter readings, manually adjusting exposure and focus – which forces you to slow down and be present with your subject. It is a quieter, more considered approach to photography and an antidote to the fast, consumptive imagery so prevalent in our digital age. All the photographs in The Space Between Us series were shot on either medium format or 35mm film.
Each portrait I take is born out of a relationship, no matter how brief, between the subject and me. The portraits are consensual, my camera’s gaze welcomed and reciprocated by the sitter. There is an element of collaboration in my pictures, which is an important part of my practice. I photograph people as I find them, usually in their natural surroundings, and offer minimal direction in terms of poses or expressions as I like to portray people authentically. To me, there is much beauty to be found in the ordinary. There is a moment in portraiture when the subject meets you through the lens and the distance between you disappears. It is this moment of connection that I try to capture.
In 2024, I moved back to the UK to a small but vibrant and creative town called Stroud in the Cotswolds. After almost two decades in Africa, moving back to England, my country of birth, has in some ways been like moving to a foreign country again. Just as photography helped me make sense of a new culture and community in Zambia, I hope to again use photography as a tool for reintegration and a way to reconnect with the people of the country I grew up in.
Victoria’s exhibition, The Space Between Us, is on at The Lansdown Gallery in Stroud, UK, from 2nd September – 8th September 2025