Far Out, Yet Still So Close

Fair Isle is a unique, magical place. And, at the same time, it is not. Life there cannot be compared to what we, in the rest of the world, are used to. Yet, if you get to spend some time on this tiny patch of land miles out into the sea, you’ll realise that, in some unexpected way, it’s not that different to modern day-to-day business in a rural community.

But what will certainly strike you, once you set foot on this remarkable place, is a subtle and warm feeling of: ‘I’ve found it.’ I stumbled across Fair Isle for the first time in the spring of 2017, through an ad in The Guardian. The community of “Britain’s most remote inhabited island” was looking for a nurse. This superlative intrigued me. And after starting to read a little about the island and its people, I developed a huge crush. It took me more than two years to finally organise a trip. When I went there in the summer of 2019, Xiomara, a friend and professional photographer, came along.