After moving to rural Yorkshire, stories of her village community soon began to unfold - the ordinary, the universal, the everyday threads of our interwoven lives. Long inspired by the work of James Ravilious, Lucy soon knew that she wanted to document this place, its people, and the sense of rootedness. After all, it is “how we live our days that makes our life” (Annie Dillard). Ten years later Ford of the Sorrel was published (Bluecoat Press, November 2021) and is available below. "The layers of connection through the community and within its extended families started to reveal themselves: who lived where, or farmed which field; whose sheep grazed by the old mill; who might be going where, when and sometimes why. The more I noticed, the more absorbed I became with the evolving stories of interwoven lives; the powerful sense of belonging created between the people and the land, and through knowing and being known to each other. I felt compelled to photograph, as far as it is possible, the rootedness of these people in this place as it is today - and may not be tomorrow."
Lucy Saggers



"A wonderful and very special body of work. Technically, perfect. The tonal richness, those almost bottomless shadows, the sharpness and detail, the colour (the pictures all have a colour that makes me think of old Record Rapid, and is almost invisible in artificial light). That balance between elegy and vivacity - there is a strong sense of the past, but the work is very much alive. I love Ian’s exhortation [in the foreword] to look for the timeless stories in our own neighbourhoods, and I think this work will encourage and inspire other people to do that."
Paul Herrmann, Director of Redeye, the Photography Network

"It's stunning and truly captures a community and place in a quiet and significant way. A beautiful project and so well-sequenced and presented.”
Nicola Shipley, Director, GRAIN Projects

"They strike us with their luminous quality: rural homages in black and white, telling tales and capturing sincere moments otherwise passed by. Lucy Saggers' depictions are rich in narrative, communicating the essence of a Yorkshire community. She is acutely drawn to light, to shade and the qualities of the British landscape. Lucy's work possesses such consciousness for texture and generosity of spirit, grasping always for the light and for humility."
Yorkshire Art Journal



"These wonderful photographs are poems and short stories; they are miniatures and epics; they are tiny movements at the edge of the folding map and huge gestures at the vortex of the turning world. Lucy Saggers’s images have the timelessness of cave paintings but, somehow the modernity of Instagram. We share their humanity and they amplify ours. Swim around in these deep, deep photographs and then look around your own street, your own village, your own neighbourhood and try and find the timeless stories there because in the end none of us, as Lucy Saggers proves, is very far from the centre of things."

from Ian McMillan's forward, Ford of the Sorrel