Edinburgh Napier University

  Selected for the festival theme of "The Anthropocene".

Drawn to the Land is an intimate portrait exploring the role woman play in shaping the rural Scottish landscape.

Working and living in a male dominated world, women have a significant yet under represented role in farming in Scotland. Drawn to the Land is an ongoing project documenting the lives of the women who are themselves farmers, not farmers’ wives, and who are working, forming and shaping the Scottish landscape.

Farming some of the most inhospitable and isolated rural areas of Scotland, these female farmers have an intense and remarkable relationship with the harsh landscape in which they live and work.


The project explores the domestic landscape as well as the physical, following the emotional story of the land as much as the historical and geographical and captures both the majesty of the landscape and its humbling effect. The women’s’ personal and physical stories reflect a wider story of our national identity, and emotional relationship with the landscape.


This project began as a way of Gerrard exploring her own relationship with the Scottish landscape. Having worked and lived away from Scotland for almost a decade working on environmentally focused photographic projects, she set out to understand the connection she, like many Scots, have with the landscape.

The rural landscape is a great symbol of Scottish national identity and nostalgia – but one which can often lead to a simplified view of picturesque, romance and “rural fantasy”.
 Drawn to the Land uncovers a more authentic reality. The work ventures deep below the surface, goes beyond the picturesque postcard view and enters the personal landscapes of individual farmers, the audience is then presented with a view of the land through the eyes of those who inhabit and are ultimately custodians for it.