In recent years, Catherine Hyland has established herself as a creator of enigmatic, often magical images that explore different communities around the world.

She has twice been a winner in the Creative Review Photography Annual – initially in 2018 for her series Rise of the Mongolians (commissioned by WeTransfer), which looked at a sumo wrestling group in Mongolia, and also in 2019 for The Traces Left Behind, her ongoing project exploring the lives of a group of North Korean defectors in London.

Here, she talks to Eliza Williams about getting started in photography, developing her distinctive style, and the challenges of bringing a project together when everything seems to be going wrong.