Hardy and Free

Keighley News features the Hardy and Free exhibition.

A photography installation originally commissioned by Haworth's Brontë Parsonage Museum has been revived as part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.

Hardy and Free was exhibited at the parsonage, once the family home of the literary siblings, in 2023.

The work, by acclaimed artist and portrait photographer Carolyn Mendelsohn, celebrates women living in Yorkshire and their personal relationships with the natural world.

The installation was displayed at the museum alongside an exhibition, The Brontës and the Wild.

Now Hardy and Free – featuring 12 large-scale portraits – is on display on the outer wall of Bradford's Kirkgate Shopping Centre, opposite Darley Street Market.

It includes work newly commissioned by Bradford 2025.

A spokesperson says: "Inspired by the Brontë sisters’ enduring connection to the landscape surrounding their home in Haworth, Hardy and Free features farmers, artists, swimmers, athletes, adventurers, activists and others – women who work on the land or are inspired by the land.

"To create the series, Carolyn embarked on a journey with each of her subjects – inviting them to take her to the place where they felt most ‘hardy and free’. In addition to each portrait she recorded their stories of physical triumph and social complexity, as well as personal experiences of love, loss and hope."

The audio stories can be listened to by scanning QR codes within the installation, or by visiting the Bradford 2025 website.

Carolyn says: "Working on this commission has been an absolute joy.

"I’ve had the privilege of meeting extraordinary women whose incredible stories are deeply rooted in the landscapes of Yorkshire.

"I wanted to explore their worlds creatively, by accompanying each woman to a place where they were ‘hardy and free’. They opened their hearts and shared their stories."

Shanaz Gulzar, creative director of Bradford 2025, says: "Bradford district is where urban energy meets rural beauty, a landscape as diverse and dynamic as the women from it. From flower farms to moorland communities, women are the centre of creativity and connection." (Alistair Shand)

The New Yorker interviews Sam Lipsyte about his story Final Boy. 

In “Final Boy,” your story in this week’s issue, Rick is a writer of fan fiction about the eighties sitcom “Charles in Charge.” Well, Rick wouldn’t call it fan fiction. How does Rick think of his writing, and how does it fit into his conception of himself?

Rick is a guy who has always loved books and used to study creative writing. He’s worked for decades in the gig economy, long before it was even called that, doing freelance copy editing and the like. But until he got into watching old episodes of “Charles in Charge,” he hadn’t figured out how to unleash his literary vision. He takes his artistic responsibilities seriously. As he says, it’s all fan fiction, by which he means all art is in conversation with prior cultural artifacts, building out from them, in the best case. Fan fiction, he believes, is just more honest about the notion of originality. I suppose he wouldn’t see what he was doing as that different from what Jean Rhys did in “Wide Sargasso Sea” or what Robert Coover or Percival Everett did in novels sprouting from “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It comes down to a matter of quality. Rick thinks that the other writers in the “Charles in Charge” community, or space, aren’t pushing the aesthetic envelope as much as they should. (Willing Davidson)