When lockdown began, I was a ball of negativity, wishing myself back in London, in my old house, buried in books and half-finished projects. I had only come to Moldova for a family funeral in March, planning to stay a week. Eight months later, I finally returned to London, carrying with me an unexpected sense of serenity from my time at home.

As a post communist country struggling with poverty and corruption, Moldova has a habit of chewing you up and spitting you out again, but it’s moments like these that make your earning for it justified. I am very grateful I managed to find a little sense of freedom from the general uncertainty nipping at any young adult during the pandemic.

Like many others lucky to confine themselves to rural settings during lockdown and begin to delight in simple pleasures, the eight months I spent home made me reconsider my relationship with it. This photo series is my ode to the most unexpected of summers and to the strange serenity I found in my home country among women, water meadows, rippling sunsets, woodsmoke, dancing, swimming, and the rustling noise of wind at night.

The idea of wild camping, swimming, fire making, is a symbol of rebellion, escape, and freedom, and at the same time a kind of masculine myth- think the Beats. After being obsessed with them when I was a teenager, I lacked seeing the same freedom and rebelliousness celebrated in women. Through this series I try to reclaim this space, by photographing women and girls in the wilderness. Inspired by artists such as Justine Kurland’s Girl Pictures, and films that exalt female friendships like Varda’s One Sings the Other Doesn't, and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, I wanted to capture them as they are in nature without disturbing too much, blending documentary and aestheticism. Among them, I have felt the confident serenity and intense pleasure of being present and part of the world around me. I see them as fearless and free, tender yet fierce.

Like so many others, lockdown has helped me find peace and solitude within the natural environment. This is the closest I got and perhaps will ever get to a girl utopia runaway commune in the forthcoming future during times of lockdown and isolation.