Murdered women are championed by photographs of shallow graves

In the year Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and killed by a police officer, at least 146 other women in the UK were murdered by men – but how many names can you remember?

Six months before Sarah died in 2021another woman was killed near where the documentary photographer Jude Wall lives and she was struck by the disparity in media attention.

This was the catalyst for a photography project that has now visited 15 sites where murdered women have been buried in shallow graves.

“I’m interested in a lot of what’s left,” Ms Wall said. “What traces are left behind, little magical things left behind that are unknown, ignored and unseen.”

Ms Wall, who lives in Swansea and lectures in photography at Cardiff Metropolitan University, said a woman is killed by a man on average every three days in the UK but many stories are not heard.

He describes the photos he takes as “memories”, which aim to open up conversations.

“It’s not angry data, it’s ‘look, this is happening, there’s still a big problem here’,” he said.

Ms Wall found the site of the former grave using press pictures, local stories and flowers left in posts but said she had learned to recognize the “very obvious signs”.

At the start of the project, he spoke to a forensic botanist about the changes he had seen in the plant life at the burial site and he used that knowledge to “feel if it was disturbed or a little different”.

“I thought that something was happening in the ground, the ground that was laid, so I started photographing these places, digging the ground and taking unusual flowers… I didn’t know what to do. I just started freezing them in the freezer,” he said.

His work does not name the woman or give details of the murder, but includes references to the box as well as photographs of grave markers and frozen flowers.

They also use soil chromatography, a photographic process that reveals the chemical, physical and biological characteristics of the earth.

“You can feel the presence, you can feel the atmosphere, you can feel anything when you’re there,” he said.

Wanting to learn more about the changing landscape at the burial site, he recently visited the Forensic Anthropology Research Facility in Texas, a 26-acre outdoor human decomposition research laboratory at Texas State University’s Freeman Ranch.

Here corpses are donated and left in the landscape for research to solve murders.

They were given access to experts who were there as well as the pasture where the bodies were left, where they were allowed to take soil samples from under the bodies.

“It confirmed a lot of what I thought had happened, that the traces were left, not about the body problem, but that there was a change in the place permanently and the person could come back to life,” he said.

Asked if he was intimidated by the experience, he said he focused on the idea that “the bigger picture is more important”.

He said the bodies were in various states of decomposition, some slightly emaciated and others not.

“Sometimes it smells bad but not often. Obviously there are things like maggots that we all don’t like to think about…but none of them feel scary or like something out of a horror movie.

He said that the cemetery meadow felt quiet, lonely and calm.

“It’s not that dehumanise people, but you start to notice other things… there’s just this really visceral color and tone that I guess you don’t expect to see,” she said.

“There are butterflies everywhere, there is only this life in that place.”

Now that he’s back from Texas, he plans to visit other British burial sites, and eventually create a book and exhibit.

The reaction to the project has been positive, he said.

“A lot of people say it’s really needed, which is great,” he said.

“I think my daughter said, ‘why do you have to be you?'” she laughs. “He’s 21, but he’s on the side.”

He admitted that his “very sad” project had caused him “as much emotion as anyone”, but said he wanted to “change the narrative” femicide.

“The public needs to be more aware of what’s going on. I’m really just trying to make people think about it,” he said.

He said the project was to commemorate the lives of murdered women.

“It affirms his existence, his life, who he is.”