LIVING OFF GRID

By Orrin Saint-Pierre

Orrin Saint-Pierre is a young artist and photographer from Blackburn, Lancashire. He is currently based in Manchester and studying at the Manchester School of Digital Art. Orrin’s personal practice centres around documentary portraiture –particularly in creating long-term socially engaged documentary projects around groups or individuals. He primarily works with analogue equipment, which both helps him to engage with his subjects through a slow and intimate workflow while also creating the aesthetic present throughout his work.

In September 2020, shortly before the second Covid-19 lockdown, Orrin was invited to travel across the country with a family friend to stay in an apple orchard in Iden, near Rye in East Sussex. In Norse mythology, Iðunn (Idunn) was the goddess of rejuvenation and the coming of spring. She was the keeper of the sacred apples of Immortality, which the gods ate to preserve their youth. Orrin liked to imagine the little village along the south coast derives its name from the Norse goddess, and although he couldn’t find any concrete evidence to back this up, it felt like too much of a coincidence to ignore. To him, and many of the people who live there, Iden is indeed a little garden of freedom and youth away from the world.