How to have Extraordinary Relationships The Unfiltered Portrait | Lucy Sewill on what lies behind the lens. (S4 E6)
Lucy Sewill is a British portrait and editorial photographer whose work bridges celebrity portraiture, equine imagery, and deeply personal visual storytelling.
Early Life & Health Struggles
Lucy was born prematurely, spending early life in an incubator.
At age 12, she suffered a serious heart infection and a stroke, which caused months of hospitalization and required her to re-learn how to walk.
Over the years she experienced repeated health challenges that remained unexplained until later in life.
Photography Career
Sewill’s artistic voice is rooted in honest, relational portraiture—she aims to reveal something true about her subjects.
She is particularly known for one-on-one informal portraits of public figures (actors, musicians, broadcasters, politicians) as well as deeply felt projects pairing people with animals.
Her images have been exhibited internationally and she has work in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery (UK).She has also published several books, including Horses & Humans.
Another of her interests has been photographing the relationship between people and their pets, such as her Dogs & Their Humans work.
In more recent years, she launched Visible Women, an exhibition and project highlighting representation of women in acting and the entertainment industry.
She also contributes to mentoring, judging, and portfolio reviews for emerging photographers.
Health & Personal Life
After years of medical uncertainty, Lucy eventually self-diagnosed (via noticing parallels between her own symptoms and those of a horse she was riding) that she had Cushing’s disease.
She underwent pituitary surgery but ended up developing Addison’s disease, requiring lifelong hormone treatment.
Lucy lives in rural England with her family, her horses, and other animals.
Horses are a continuing passion and a recurring subject in her work, often serving as a metaphorical or emotional anchor in her visual storytelling.
Key points of the episode:
- How she was photographing famous people and realised only 10 per cent were women and there were only two women out of 30 in British musicians project.
- How, then she is fighting inequality and invisibility,
- The relationship she has with her photographic subjects, and why she gravitates towards famous people.
- How imposter syndrome helped her!
- Her ongoing health struggles and how her GP described her as "The unluckiest person he knew"
- How synchroniscitally, she found out she had Cushings disease...
- ...and how animals healed her.
Want to learn more? www.lucysewill.com
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/lucysewill
Has this podcast inspired you and would you like to learn more?
You can reach out to Lucy, love coach, relationship counsellor, couples counsellor extraordinaire and author of "How to have extraordinary relationships with absolutely everybody".....
On:http://www.lucycavendishlovecoach.com/