Walking Distance

Walking Distance is Lizzy Stewart s contemporary visual essay on the experience of being a woman out walking it s a meditation on society, womanhood and 80s movies, interlaced with shards of autobiography and illustrated with a beautiful series of sequential and non-sequential watercolour images.

I love shots of women walking through cities in films. I like that they are alone and alive and, usually, wearing a nice coat. I like that even though they are a part of a bigger story, something grand or trivial, for those seconds they are removed from their storyline . . . I like walking because It takes me out of my head and into the world. Walking is the clearest way for me to participate in life and that s the best I can do.

Merging external observation and internal contemplation, Lizzy Stewart examines what her life is and wonders what it should be; what is expected of a 30-year-old woman by society, by family and friends and by herself? How does one avoid polemics and absolutism and simply live in today s world?

Lizzy walks the streets of her London, gaining agency by being in control of her own direction, speed and momentum. Walking is a time for self-reflection, for observing others and for imagining how we appear to them. What is expected of us, and how should that influence what we do and how we feel about ourselves?