Sarah Ainslie

Nicolás Dumit Estévez Raful Espejo Ovalles Morel: Sarah, at Samphire Hoe, during the celebration of the summer 2025 Solstice you worked with cyanotypes for which you collected found objects along the waters of the English Channel. I know that we talked about how little debris there was in the area, which is great news. When we discussed your ideas for the Solstice organized by Doctor Luke Dixon, you mentioned how you have worked with objects in the past. Can you talk about it and tell us about specific projects?

Sarah Ainslie: Collecting abandoned objects has been an integral part of my practice going back many years, using the photographic processes of cyanotypes and photograms to capture these found objects. Shoreditch at Night was a commission in 1999 to explore the area around Shoreditch in the east end of London where I have been working in my studio since the 1980s. Photograpahing this area at night arose from making a body of work about Smithfield meat market, a market that only operates at night, a very busy place of trading, buying and camaraderie. This led me to think about these worlds whilst most of us are sleeping, something that we aren’t aware of but is very much part of the magical life of our city at night.

Wandering in these streets, where the buildings were empty and devoid of the people who inhabit them during the day, there were the residues of personal effects merging with the reflections in the windows, creating another world, a shifting landscape, like the moments day and night cross paths, a meeting of beauty and memory and the making of new narratives in these streets.

It was a time before regeneration took its hold. There was this atmosphere of walking in the footsteps of these absent people. As I walked instead of human encounters there were random abandoned objects that were the traces of people, there was rubbish but also more personal things like shoes lying in a puddle, where had they come from and where were they going? A box of electric curlers haphazardly lying on the pavement, discarded food, clothing, chairs etc. were like clues of passing interludes forming layers of histories in the streets.

Drifting in the Peripheries of an Urban Landscape, a current project where I am also engaging with these abandoned objects like they are lost souls leaving their imprint in the landscape. I have been painting a liquid photo emulsion onto the surface of them in the darkroom and then printing an image of these wanderings onto them, taking on a new life being the object and the photograph within it.

NDEREOM: The reference to objects makes me think of props, which I used to deploy more frequently in my performances, but I am trying to do away with using objects as much as I can. There is way too much stuff out there. My point here in regard to objects and props is to ask you about the work that you have done with alternative theater companies. One of my introductions to the arts was through theater, when I was still a child; the other was religion. I will let you talk about your own experiences documenting thespians.

SA: It is interesting that you talk about theatre and religion because they seem very interconnected. My thesis when I was at art college was about the Noh Theatre which has its roots in ritual, through this structure the stories are told with great respect, simplicity and clarity, there is a connectedness to photography which has its own structure with the camera creating a frame in which the image is revealed through the taking of the picture. Photography for me is active and has a performative element whether being an observer behind the camera, or for my project at college where I dressed as a tree to experience how it felt to be a tree in a landscape, participating in the act of photography has also been a way of telling an internal unseen story, an inner vision where the unseen that is felt and experienced becomes visible. These images have become part of Caught Between Two Worlds, a family project I will talk about later.

Having worked for many years in fringe theatre with companies that were more political and experimental was important in telling and sharing stories and has played a huge part in projects that has come out of that experience especially with the communities in the East End. I have loved being in the rehearsal room particularly with Complicite who I have worked with over many years, a space of exploration to reveal stories to be shared. The documentation becomes more than just the actors but the gestures, the space and the objects within it, an interplay of all elements.

I have worked with Luke Dixon since the late 1980s on different theatre productions, and one was in Grahamstown, South Africa which in 1999 led to creating a collaborative project with a group of women in the township, over a period of a year. The idea was for them to make a portrait of their lives, I gave them disposable cameras, they had never used a camera before there were no mobile phones. They took photographs that were printed, and then collages were made, I made portraits of them in black and white and as we sat around chatting and drinking tea together, they told me about themselves, gathering their own stories which with the collages and portraits all created an exhibition Woza Mama, for the Grahamstown Festival.

I have become very interested in both theatre as a spectacle and theatre of the everyday.

NDEREOM: I would like to hear about the series where you photographed women, Bethnal Green Working Women. Women around the world, in my opinion, do the big bulk of the work to keep countries, societies and all kinds of groups going, yet there is the issue of underpaid or unpaid labor as it relates to raising children, caring for the ill, making meals, offering emotional support to whole families, and being a steadfast presence in many difficult situations. There is also the issue of the growing numbers of women who work beyond the domestic sphere, who have to come home from their outside jobs to deal with a second shift. What are some of the stories informing those who you have been photographing?

Tell us as well about the Hackney Working Women from London’s East End? And would you be willing to elaborate on London’s East End? I have been traveling to this city since 2012 and, while it took me a while to feel at ease there, I finally got to connect with the place at a personal level, through walks and talks with people like you, and Dr. Luke, among many other Londoners.

SA: These two commissions Working Women in Hackney (1991) from Hackney Museum in Hackney, and Bethnal Green Working Women (2022) from Oxford House in Bethnal Green, London, have been instrumental in this exploration. It was in 1991 that I began this project which led to an important realisation that the incredible work women did was largely unseen and yet at the same time they were such a vital part in all areas of the community.

These two commissions and also working for a blog Spitalfields Life took me on a journey through the east end as a way of mapping the world of women’s work and through their indomitable spirit be able to share and make visible their lives. Through searching, meeting and building relationships with these women from firefighters, garage mechanics, transport workers, strippers, carers, shop keepers, hospital workers, film makers, performers and many more the photographs gave me an insight into the layers of history that their lives and work has come from and became a celebration of their working lives.

One area of work is the rag trade which has been an important part of the economic life of people living in the east end for over a hundred years changing through time. In 1991 there were companies like Burberry who had a whole factory in Hackney where there were designers, machinists, and admin staff all working in the same building, the factory closed in 2005 as the making of garments shifted to the far east. Also, many women had been home workers, I met women who had bought their own sewing machines so they could work in-between raising their families with the sound of the sewing machines rumbling in the background. A few of the Bangladeshi women kept their sewing machines and still have them as a memory of the importance that their contribution had made for the family and helping their children into higher education.

By 2022 there were women who had become entrepreneurial and had their own businesses upcycling clothes and teaching others. Very early memories of starting to photograph in the east end in the 1980s was in Brick Lane on Sundays where people would lay their clothes and other household objects on the street to sell, taking their personal lives out into the public spaces of the street.

There were individual women like Sister Dennis who was a film maker and set up her editing equipment in her kitchen as she couldn’t afford a studio and could work around the other parts of her domestic life, it was joyous to see her at work.

I was lucky to find a couple of women who were a team on the dustcarts and took me out on their round early one morning, they enjoyed having their own truck with no-one to tell them what to do as long as they got the work done, they felt liberated although of course it was heavy and smelly work and by 2022 I didn’t find any women working on the dustbins.

When I photographed in the local hospital, I realised that every person and particularly the women who worked there whether they were a cleaner, consultant, porter, nurse, midwife or caterer all were equally important and without one of them the hospital wouldn’t be able to function.

 There were so many extraordinary women working in so many different areas, I was also invited to collaborate with strippers and make a book Baby Oil and Ice about the demise of the strip pubs in the east end which led on to photographing burlesque performances in local venues.

I wonder if unconsciously being a single parent and having a strong network of women around me has been a factor in wanting to make visible the lives of these women.

NDEREOM: I was in London for the Pride Parade and I was taken aback by the number of people who circulate and congregate in the streets. This one comment of mine is beyond the parade. I remember scheduling a date to meet Sonia Barrett at Soho Square, and calling her to tell her to please pick me up on Oxford Street. The Square was jam-packed. In places like London and Hong Kong, I do have to say I feel like a New York City country mouse. Can you say something about your connection to London and what keeps you in that incredible metropolis?

SA: I think what keeps me in London and particularly in the east end is its rich history spanning hundreds of years, a place very much connected to the River Thames and through Britain’s colonial empire the docks have given rise to the movement of goods and people which has brought people from all over the world whether enslaved, entrepreneurs, people fleeing countries and finding new beginnings creating a rich community that has shifted and changed through time and has always been a place deeply involved in the challenge and fight for justice through protest which continues to this day.

For the past fifteen years I have been a contributing photographer for the blog Spitalfields Life, which has been instrumental for me in becoming actively involved in campaigns for local housing, opposing planning for building and helping to fight other injustices within the area.

It is a place I have come to love mainly through being a photographer and the people I have become involved with, not just photographing the place and the people, but also facilitating and collaborating in projects within the community. So, all this brings together the different aspects of my life since moving here in the 1980s and is definitely where I call home. Having a studio which is a personal space to make, play and create and then the interplay with the public, physical and political space of the area means there is a constant dialogue and exploration in process.

NDEREOM: In Urban Incidentals Notes you generate a visual diary of the goings on of the city. What does still surprise about London? I ask myself the same question about New York City, and not much catches my eye in places like Manhattan, which has been slowly becoming a suburban shopping mall—and I know this is an exaggeration on my part—and this why I live in the South Bronx, where streets and neighborhood still feel real to me.

SA: Urban Incidental Notes became a visual diary because I think after many years of being inspired by photographing in the streets I found myself not feeling as engaged and interested as I had before, so I set myself to take just one picture a day, which was a revelation to me because by searching for moments in the everyday small details would become visible within the changing light, these details that might have evaded me before would come to life. In some way it’s like a meditation on being in the present and that the past is always within our present. This is something I frequently return to helping to stimulate looking becoming active and always I am surprised by what is revealed.

These photographs are all taken using black and white film which I then develop and print in my darkroom, creating small prints that I often juxtapose with others in small notebooks, seemingly unconnected and so creating a dialogue between the images and the moments in time. I think using a film camera where you can’t see what you have taken is very liberating.

NDEREOM: I would like to learn about your closet project! You called this Wardrobes. I am fascinated by stuff and, at the same time I generate very little stuff as a creative. There is also a great surplus of things in the world that those who purchase them usually do not need. I can probably die at an older age without having to buy a single piece of clothing. What draws you into other people’s wardrobes?

SA: The Wardrobes project was not really about people’s things or acquisition of clothing. Each person’s wardrobe is different in its physicality and how the clothes and objects are arranged within it. I was interested in the wardrobe being a very personal place and what it would reveal about them when I made their portrait within it. I began by asking performers I was working with and then it grew to family, friends and others I met, everyone was surprisingly keen to be part of the project. Many said they felt comfortable and less self-conscious being photographed in their wardrobes maybe because they were enveloped by their personal belongings and didn’t have to think about how to be in front of the camera.

I also asked them to tell me something about their wardrobes, it could be a memory, a story or something special that they kept within it. One person had an urn with the ashes of her daughter, others kept casts of their teeth, costumes and toys from childhood. One woman hid in her wardrobe when her sister-in-law came to visit because she didn’t want to see her, whilst inside she suddenly saw her sister-in-law’s eye peering through the key-hole. As children several people got in their mum’s wardrobes and tried to go to Narnia (from a book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe).

Wardrobes had figured in my mind since being a child as I always felt that there were secrets hidden in my parent’s wardrobes, I often found myself searching in them for something though not knowing why. One time in my dad’s drawers I found a pair of knee length patent leather boots with low heels, this created a dissonance within me that I didn’t understand but think the experience unconsciously became the heart of the project, a search to understand secrets and what we hide. It is interesting that he didn’t want to have his portrait made in his wardrobe and it was only after his death that I discovered he had been a secret cross dresser, so I feel these inter-generational secrets are passed down unconsciously and have permeated my work in many ways, especially reflecting on the photographs I made within the performance world of burlesque and striptease. I would have loved to have been able to talk to him as it must have been complex especially for a man born in the 1920’s. I am very fascinated by how secrets unfold and are manifest often within our bodies through the generations.

NDEREOM: When I was 8 or 9, I built a Catholic chapel in a linen closet! I am glad I did not burn the house because I lit candles in this enclosed space. Of course, the closet was empty. Howerver, please do not try this at home.

The UK has and continues to be so thoroughly enmeshed in a history of colonization and empire, with places in the Caribbean still treated as colonies. I am bringing this up because we talked about Caught Between Two Worlds. I will let you say more about this undertaking and your journeys to Thailand.

SA: This history of colonisation and empire that I have found myself deeply embedded in through my own family history. Caught Between Two Worlds has grown into a journey of weaving the histories of my ancestors. Where one part of the story weaves through another and with the different threads seemingly disconnected creating a whole piece that moves backwards and forwards through time.

This journey began in the 1970s when my dad Jack Ainslie discovered that his father Charles B Ainslie, my grandfather, had a family whilst working as a forester for the Borneo Company (a British colonial company) in Chiangmai, Thailand between 1898-1914. This family was completely unknown as my grandfather had died when dad was 15, this was the beginning of uncovering a past of family secrets. So suddenly out of the blue dad was not an only child but had three Eurasian half-sisters, their children and grandchildren spread across different parts of the world, he began to meet, build and slowly create relationships with this part of the family which may have never happened but through a chance encounter. And for me this family has been a rich exploration with visits to Thailand with my second cousin to try to make sense of this history together.

In the attic of the family home I grew up in there were trunks filled with my grandmother Eileen’s needlework, threads, paintings of flowers and plans for their garden, also there were collections of photo albums mainly from my grandfather’s travels and work in Thailand, unfortunately I never really spent much time looking at them or asking questions about them. After both my parents died, I brought these trunks to my studio where I began to explore these photo albums and diaries looking for clues to see if there was anything about his abandoned family but there was nothing at all, it was only photographs of forestry and colonial life, an absolute silence not even in his diaries as if they didn’t exist. I began searching for answers and some kind of understanding and these photo albums which are embedded in the past but resound in the present became the catalyst to redress a part of the family erased from history and give them their rightful place within it.  

Using the process of making photomontages and the layering of composite images became a way for me of weaving together his photo albums with photos that I have been given by this now connected extended family, and the early performative photographs of myself to create reconstructed and re-imagined images that disrupt the narrative of these unexplained and secret lives.       

As I began to look into my ancestors on all sides of my family the journey has taken me deep into colonialism in other parts of the empire, a great, great grandfather working for the East India Company who married into a family of enslavers and plantation owners in Jamaica, a grandmother born to French Mauritians whose company had  traded sugar, and my maternal grandfather who was involved in insurance in the city of London.

This process continues and is a navigation to piece together a family’s web of threads within the empire that is taking me through dark passages of time and the implications of what these legacies have left behind.

NDEREOM: I am so glad that we connected in London this time. Is there anything that you would like to ask me or to say to close this conversation for now? Thank you again.

SA: It was wonderful working with you at Samphire Hoe and meeting in London to share stories and explore our ideas, thoughts and experiences and hope that we will continue this dialogue into the future in whatever way we can.  Thank you so much for asking me to collaborate with you through this conversation, I have really loved doing it and has been so interesting taking time thinking about the threads that weave through my work and has extended the conversation with you.

Images courtesy of Sarah Ainslie

Sarah Ainslie’s links: Website / Instagram / Contact

Sarah Ainslie has been based in and inspired by London’s East End since the mid 1980s. Leading to commissions and creating bodies of work including Working Women in Hackney, Arsenal Football Supporters, Smithfield Meat Market, Spitalfields, Shoreditch and Brick Lane in London.

Through working with theatre companies including Complicite, Clean Break, Second Wave, RSC, Almeida and Royal Court my fascination with the process of performance — from rehearsals to the production itself — became instrumental in documenting the Strip Pubs in the East End, the Whoopee Club and Burlesque Club Nights.

Since 2000 she has facilitated community photography projects with the elderly, young people, teenage mums and the homeless for Four Corners Film and Photography, All Change, Photoworks, Blackfriars Settlement, St Hilda’s and Theatre Nomad in the UK and South Africa.

At present she is working on two ongoing projects, Caught Between Two Worlds which draws from her grandfather’s photo albums when he was working in Thailand between 1899-1914 as a forester, and the discovery of an inter-generational cover up of a secret family where the truth is veiled within the colonial legacy. She has been creating reconstructed and re-imagined photomontages and composites to explore, question and disrupt this narrative.

Also Limehouse to Tilbury exploring the more liminal edges of London where urban and rural life collide and where the edges of capitalist development clash with the detritus of abandoned industry.