For photographer Annie Lai, creating this series for The Overview Book: Meditations on Nature For a World in Transition gave her a sense of healing—a feeling she hopes to evoke in others through her photographs.

Lai, along with prop stylist Kingsley Tao and model Jane Fu, decided to embark on this shoot’s trip at the end of the British summer, settling on Dartmoor National Park as the perfect backdrop with horses freely roaming around grassy hills and granite stonewalls.

“It was such an intimate shoot and everyone was so at ease,” Lai said. “Kingsley brought a whole bucket of flowers with water onto the train from London that he later used to style Jane.”

The trio worked from early afternoon until the Sun was just about to set when they finally witnessed horses on the other side of a hill. As they walked quietly toward the animals, Fu stripped off her shoes, walking barefoot on spiky grass to get near them, Lai explained. When she slowly reached out her hand, the horses seemed to accept her presence. 

“We took the pictures as the last beam of Sun disappeared—it was complete silence apart from the horse chewing and sound of the breeze,” she said. “It was truly a magical moment.”

With this project, Lai intended to explore the relationship between body, nature, and surfaces by blurring the boundary of the artificial and the organic. In one shot, a locust made from bamboo leaves ties around Fu’s finger. In another, Fu is covered in moss, making it seem as if she’s merged with the soil, “contrasting the vulnerability of the human body against piles of rocks.” 

Lai, a fashion photographer, consistently celebrates the art of intimacy in her work, with “an eye for fleeting, unique moments” like these.

As she’s gotten older, she’s noticed a deeper appreciation for nature emerging inside her, this project allowing her to expand further into that space, all while embracing the same healing properties she aims to give her audience. 

“[Nature is] so therapeutic that once we are immersed in it, all the troubles and unpleasantness seem so insignificant.”