A war photographer looks back at her life on the road
Anastasia Taylor-Lind started life in caravans in southern England and ended up photographing women fighters in Kurdistan.
I grew up traveling. My dad was from inner-city London but had a dream of heading out to the countryside and living in a horse-drawn wagon.
I was born on the road in 1981 and spent my first few years of life traveling in southern England with my parents and our horses. Eventually, my parents bought a field in Devon where we lived in caravans [trailers].
Until I was 13 years old, we had no running water or electricity—so, obviously, no TV. But my dad was a great storyteller; I grew up engrossed in tales about his hippie-trail travels throughout Europe, America, and Asia. And my mom read children’s novels and poetry aloud to me every night at bedtime. Early on, I thought I might like to be a war poet when I grew up, like Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen.
