
Estate Portraits
- Photographer
Spending her formative years in the English countryside before moving to London as an adult, Tara delights in the beauty and raw aesthetic of her surroundings. Her eye for observing poignance in natural composition echoes through her work – both in photography and film.
Tara’s academic background lies in Journalism and languages, and it was while at university, amid a year in Barcelona that she unearthed and galvanized her skill for the art of photographing.
This period, along with her time as a runner for Ridley Scott was transformational in sealing the pursuit of a career in cultivating intimate imagery. Darby also salutes both Dazed & Confused, and designer David James for their significant roles in her path to creative recognition.
The power and immediacy of natural light and its rudimentary unpredictability is a component Tara is inspired by, and its essence translates so honestly and viscerally in each frame. The candid energy she’s able to capture is also a testament to the openness she brings to her work.
Storytelling is deep-rooted in Tara; mastering the elevation of magnetism in what is natural, and using her inquisitive mind to reveal the soul that lies in what could be seemingly ordinary.
Her curiosity and passion for human stories has also lead her into directing, with her debut Run It Out; a tender and bold tale of survival, marking her notable entrance into the arena of film-making, with more of its kind on the horizon.
“In ‘Waves’ I tell a story about my Grandparents, of their loves and losses and the long lasting impact they have had on me. It is a story about family and the symbolic significance that a house can have; of family history, the enduring power of love and the changes brought about by death.”
Unité, Tara Darby’s personal piece on modernist buildings and social housing was shot across London, Marseille, and India.
Robin Arzon: athlete, former lawyer, ultra-marathoner.
In this feature length documentary, Tara Darby follows Robin while she runs five marathons in five days across the Utah desert in an effort to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis research. In one of the toughest challenges of her life, Tara captures Robin’s inspiring journey as well as her memories of past traumas and why she is propelled to continually push past her own limits.
As an inadvertent pastime, Tara began carrying her camera around while living in Hackney, engaging with a succession of local characters that took her eye. These documentary portraits, collated under the title ‘We Are Only Humans’, are an unsentimental pictorial celebration of the liveliest post code of the liveliest city in the world at a unique moment of transition.
Tara’s pictures are about the connection between human beings and their landscape; about society functioning and malfunctioning at an instinctive level with its surroundings. Text by Heidi James.