Rojee spent many months reworking the narrative. Then, in March 2021, the news of Sarah Everard’s murder shocked the nation. Everard, 33, was walking home alone in London when she was kidnapped and brutally murdered by a police officer. “It was then that I realised what this project was actually about,” says Rojee.
While the work began with a sense of adventure, with time it took on new meaning. Rojee began to consider the act of walking alone, as a woman. She remembered how her loved ones worried for her safety, and the constant mental battles that she had to overcome along the way too.
“When I looked at my images again, I realised that this feeling does come through,” she says. “I didn’t see it before, but there’s this slightly scary, slightly sinister stuff.”
Along the way, Rojee developed a particular affection for the horses, which feature several times in the project. She remembers her moments with these majestic beasts as some of the most special, and later, illustrative of the meaning she is conveying with the work.
“Although all the horses I saw, bar two, were tied up, that too is symbolic of the struggle between the tension of having this wilderness available to me, but with the undercurrent of those worries and fears.” She adds: “You just have to keep moving forward. There’s always going to be danger out there, but you need to keep going. What else are you going to do?”