Anthology of Rural Life: Redruth Photographs

The Anthology of Rural Life is a project that provides a comparative visual study of the continuities and differences in patterns of life within contemporary rural areas. These in turn reflect shifting economic, social and cultural forces occurring in diverse European contexts.

In May 2025, an exhibition of the Anthology of Rural Life was held at Auction House Gallery in Cornwall (UK). This will include images made in locations across Europe alongside recent work focusing on Contemporary life in Redruth, a former mining town in Cornwall.

‘Robins and Udy’s project overlaps with disciplines of photographic anthropology, cultural geography and rural sociology. Their work can be situated more specifically within a distinguished history of comparable photographic projects that combine the visual language of artistic practice with the remit of an investigative survey. They describe what they do as ‘gently mapping’ a place and its inhabitants. The result avoids agrarian romanticism and rural heroism. Rather, it provides an understated, descriptive emphasis on individuals and specific sites’. (Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum, London)