peripheral vision

A few months ago, we came upon an acquaintance giving out flyers outside the farmers’ market. She cooed over the baby and chatted very warmly with my oldest. We talked about her flyers (actually I wish I could find them now). After we left, I realized she’d never once asked whether the baby was a boy or a girl. She’d avoided gendered pronouns by talking about “the little one” or “the baby.” And it was SO refreshing. Whether the baby is a boy or girl really didn’t matter at all. What matters is that the baby is adorable and happy and smiling, and my oldest is clearly a great, nurturing older brother, and she covered all that most satisfactorily. coming away from that conversation made me want to see her again soon, but I haven’t.

A few weeks ago at the library, I came upon two fathers talking intimately. One of them had a child just a few months older than my oldest and the other had one a few months older than my youngest. I didn’t want to intrude on their conversation but we were the only people in the play area and somehow I just found myself included in the conversation. The baby happened to be wearing blue that day, so I noticed when the man asked me how old my child was. My child — not my son.

I’ve known for a long time how quickly and thoroughly we stuff gender onto our babies. But I hadn’t really thought about avoiding gendered pronouns, even when you have a good sense of the baby’s sex. Since the more recent conversation, I’ve become a lot more aware of how often I refer to a baby’s sex indirectly, and I don’t really like it. Not only that, but I’m finding I don’t even want talk about “my son” so much as I do “my child” or “my kid” or “my oldest or youngest.” It’s a small thing, but a nice thing.

My oldest’s teacher (who I adore in every other respect btw) often divides the class into girls and boys to facilitate certain activities (putting coats on, going outside, that kind of thing). And funnily enough, my kid now always tells me about how, at recess, he and his friends fight the girls’ team (which often also has boys on it). There is more to children than whether they’re a girl or a boy. And yet it seems to be our default setting, to notice and, however indirectly, comment on their gender. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Now here are some pictures of my oldest’s interventions in our home.

(later the same day)

decorations for Santa

mouse trap

Christmas tree

So I’m a little afraid to say it, but 2011 was awfully good to me. Sure there were disappointments (I’m not going to list all the exhibitions, contests and whatnot that didn’t pick my work, but there were many) and challenges (for example, I couldn’t eat any dairy at Christmas – wah!). But, on the whole, it was a pretty magical year. I had a baby AND a great birth experience. I met some wonderful new people and got to know others better. I made good progress on Yes these bones shall live before I birthed the baby, and some slower progress on it towards the end of the year. I’m starting to feel like the main purpose of the project is the conversations I have with these women, who I might not otherwise meet. And even if I did meet them, if it weren’t for the project, our conversations wouldn’t get so deep. I think every single one is a teacher for me; my perspective and learning are widened with every single woman, although some conversations reverberate in my mind for longer than others. I’m STILL thinking about stuff I talked about with people I photographed right at the start of the project in the summer of 2010.

Here is Kiss My Ashlinn, who I photographed just before Christmas.

In 2011, I was also named a Critical Mass finalist AND a Flash Forward Emerging Photographer. I had a two-person exhibition in a public gallery, and I learned so much about hanging artwork. I got to see one of my prints get auctioned off at a live auction, AND it went for a good price. I got to see my work in THREE printed books: The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, Foam Magazine’s Book of Beds and Flash Forward 2011. I received my copy of The M Word in September, I think, and immediately started reading it during the baby’s tummy time. My plan was to read it cover to cover and do a semi, totally-biased book review. But these days I seem to read books like I browse the web, and I had at least four other books on the go and maybe finished one of them, and then I got more and more books from various libraries, and now The M Word is near the bottom of the pile somehow. I did get about halfway through, I think, I can say with confidence that the depth of this book is impressive. If you want to explore the history of motherhood in feminist art, this may be THE book on the subject. And I can’t believe my work is in it. Having said that, a lot of the early feminist art dealing with motherhood was WAY too heavy in psychoanalytic theory for my taste.

And Flash Forward 2011? Also amazing to be included. I remember when I first discovered the Flash Forward photographers. It was January 2009, I think, and I saw the 2008 Flash Forward book at Chapters of all places. So I bought it, and as I flipped through the very accomplished and diverse imagery, I thought to myself, “Wow, these photographers have really Made It.” And now here I am, in it, and no, I haven’t Made It. And yet it’s a beautiful book, and paging through it, I was impressed with how the images all flowed. I felt like I was being taken on a visual journey, not paging through a catalogue, and I thought the editor must have sequenced the images for flow rather than alphabetically by photographer’s name. But when I actually looked at the photographers’ names, I discovered they did in fact sequence it alphabetically and by country. So the fact that it flowed so well is a tremendous accomplishment for all involved in producing the book.

For 2012, I have a few goals. First is to keep shooting. Especially since I’m going to be in a big three-person show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery this summer. Second is to develop a proposal for a solo exhibition of Yes these bones shall live. Ideally, I’ll even secure space before the end of the year (not to show it before the end of the year, but to have the space secured), but that depends on other people, and I hate making goals that depend on other people. Third is to maybe finish the series by the end of the year. But if I get to the end of the year, and I want to keep meeting and learning from these fascinating women, then I totally give myself permission not to finish (spoken like a true ENFP).

Personally, I want to learn how to make, grow, repair and barter for more, and buy or hire less. I want to do things I’ve never done before; not necessarily big things, just small, mildly uncomfortable, destabilizing things. So far, I’ve roasted a chicken, made stock from its carcass, made cinnamon buns (also my first time making yeasted bread at all), and made a card by cutting out construction paper. I have never done any of these before, and while none of the results were perfect, they were all enjoyable. This is life.

So what are your hopes for the New Year?

Or, if you needed any further evidence that I’ve become a humourless feminist…

This morning I noticed A Photo Editor’s Daily Edit featured a sexualized woman on all fours to illustrate an article entitled, “Crazy In Love” in Men’s Health magazine. At first I was taken aback because love is generally experienced between two people, not by looking at a sexualized woman. Then I read the intro paragraph and discovered it was actually about (male) jealousy and how “whether it leads to ruin or redemption, scientists say, depends on [the man experiencing jealousy] and the woman he loves.” (Um, HOW, pray tell, can jealousy lead to redemption???)

Quite apart from the quality of the article and the fact that it is just replaying the old Women Bring on Men’s Violence Trope (aka Rape Culture) but with so-called scientific backing, I decided to reply to the fact that a picture of a sexualized woman on all fours with a decidedly come hither look on her face was illustrating an article about (men’s) jealousy. Given that A Photo Editor is clearly capable of critical thinking, I thought it was just one of those oversights that needed some consciousness-raising.

I’ve had blind spots pointed out to me recently, and afterwards it was like I had new eyes. For example, just the other day someone pointed out to me how fat is often used in children’s books as code for lazy, stupid, and/or generally unpleasant. Even my beloved Harry Potter series does this. And how could I have missed it???

Similarly, Katherine Don’s series Bringing Up Baby on Bitch Magazine has shown me the light about how birth, parenting and mothers are represented on tv. Again or still, I’ve been wondering, How did I not notice this before??? Now I can’t stop noticing…

So it was with this sort of spirit that I commented. And pretty quickly, men leapt to defend the work.

First up, the old You’re Just Not Getting It Because You’re Not Part of Our Inner (magazine-publishing and reading) Circle Defence.

Next, Infantalizing The Complainer, a variation on the You’re Just Not Getting It Defence, by mentioning Teen Beat. Because clearly my objections are juvenile. If I were just a little more grown-up, I’d get it.

Oh look! It’s the You’re Just A Humourless Man-Hating Feminist Defence! I honestly think the last time I heard this I was in high school. Clearly I live in a magical bubble full of wonderful, thoughtful, intelligent men who are not threatened by having sexism pointed out to them. And I don’t even mean only my husband and close relations – I mean acquaintances, both real-life and online. Thank you A Photo Editor for showing me how awesome the men in my life are. (Don’t get me wrong – I’ve seen lots of it online, it’s just been a long time since I’ve experienced it personally.)

You know what? I don’t read print magazines, men’s or otherwise. Probably for this very reason.

Ooh – the If A Woman Was Involved In The Decision-Making It Can’t Be Sexist Defence, along with a slightly more poisonous variation of the Humourless Man-Hating Feminist Defence. If this kind of comment is a cliche, it’s for the same reason that feminist texts from 30 and 40 years ago are still shockingly contemporary. Because women and men are equally socialized by the patriarchal system and both internalize its bullshit. Because nothing is changing.

I know it’s juvenile for me to retreat to my own safe(ish) space to rehash this. But there’s no point in my commenting further over there. It won’t achieve anything or change anyone’s mind. I’m truly shocked that a smart man can have such a horrid view of women. Especially since A Photo Editor has a self-identified feminist man contributing to it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about connections lately, and how you can’t always perceive the connections between things. For example, if someone holds a long string in the middle, the ends will hang down. If you just look at (or photograph) the bottom of the strings, they look like two separate strings. If you are able to hold the whole picture in your view (by moving back or using a wider angle lens), only then can you see than the strings are actually connected. I often feel like that about some of the photographs I make. I believe they are connected but I can’t see how or where yet. I was actually going to mention this the other day in my things I’ve been thinking about post, but I forgot.

Three days after I mentally composed a paragraph something like the above but forgot to write it down, my five-year-old asked me to help him tie his front-end loader onto his fire truck so it could be transported to the garage (apparently it’s broken down). He told me he had two strings and he held them up to me in such a way that I only saw one string, held in the middle by his thumb and forefinger.

I said, “No you only have one string.”

And then he showed me two.

I got chills. Maybe some things AREN’T connected after all.

I find myself reacting a bit when people describe my derby series as being about a subgroup. To me, it’s not so much about roller derby as it is about gender and identity as performance, and how real women construct and reveal their identities. The roller derby part is because the sport toys with sexuality, aggression, our expectations of femininity and performance within the context of a physically demanding sport. Then again, my statement starts with a description of roller derby, so maybe I need to change that.

* * *
I wonder if the silence around early pregnancy – maintained by the fear of miscarriage – is really a vestige (or continued evidence?) of the belief that woman’s only value is in childbearing. If a woman’s only value is in bearing children, then losing a baby becomes a source of shame. As much as I support any woman’s right to privacy, I don’t believe that this silence does any favours for real, grieving women and the people who love her and who (would if they knew) love her baby.

* * *

I wonder if institutions seek to cover up stories of their male staff or volunteers molesting boys rather than calling the police because of the homosexual aspect to it. That rape is something that’s supposed to happen only to girls. Men and boys should be impenetrable. That the idea of a boy being raped is so abhorrent, people prefer to stuff it under the rug than to call the police. If a coach were raping a young girl in a shower room, would a witness be more likely to call the police?

* * *
I’ve been thinking a lot about how many messages we send to young girls (and women of all ages, really) that the most important thing about them is their appearance and being pretty. I mentioned this to my mom this weekend and she asked me if I thought that receiving comments on my appearance had affected me. I was about to answer no, somewhat disappointedly since it seemed to be contradicting my belief. But then I remembered the times I wept to my mother that I was ugly. She remembered one time I was mad at my boyfriend when I was 17 because I’d asked him if he would still like me if I was fat and he’d said he didn’t know. (Or at least that was the story I told my mom. The real story was that I was thinking of going on The Pill, and the potential side effect I was most worried about was gaining five pounds. So I asked my boyfriend if he would still be attracted to me if I gained five pounds from The Pill and he said he didn’t know. THAT’s why I was mad. Also, how messed up is that???) But that wasn’t the time I was remembering. I remember crying in the bathroom about my supposed ugliness when I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old. I also remember being surprised by an episode of Three’s Company, when Jack was excited at the prospect of dating a redhead. I was younger than eight, and I didn’t think it was possible for a redhead to be pretty. I wonder where I got those ideas from?

* * *
Now that the leaves are mostly gone, I keep noticing all the birds’ nests that were hidden all summer, and I want to steal them. I was all disappointed with how high up they all are but today I noticed two nests in the shrubs in front of our house. Is it bad to steal birds’ nests in the winter? Will they come back in the spring and expect them to be intact?

I’m looking for more derby girls to photograph for my project, Yes these bones shall live. Especially women who live in the tri-city area and who are available during weekdays. Also especially queer families and women of size. If you’re interested in participating, even if you don’t fall into one of those categories, please send me an email at kate (at) peripheralvision (dot) ca. I can work in Guelph, Kitchener, Cambridge, Hamilton, Toronto, Oshawa or Peterborough, so even if you don’t live near me, if you’re interested drop me a line. Even if you’re farther away, email me, because I’m thinking of travelling to photograph more women.

Now here is a picture of my son on Halloween.

I hope to hear from some interested people soon.

(My good sleeper has officially left the building, leaving me grumpy as all get out and overwhelmed to boot. In his defence i think he has a teensy cold, but still, it’s been more than two months now of lousy sleep…)

So, in lieu of coherently articulated thoughts, I give you some recent photos.

(Sympathies welcome)

Alec Soth has a new flickr challenge, in honour of his From Here to There exhibition now in Syracuse, New York. Syracuse is considerably closer to me than Minnesota, but when you add a screaming baby into the car, suddenly the car ride is an eternity. (This weekend we discovered the baby has not outgrown his misery in cars after all, and our hearts and ears are still recovering from two-hour drive.) Anyways, the new flickr challenge: recreating an iconic photograph. He launched the challenge shortly after this story in the New York Times and also this blog post. This is a perfect time for me to do this kind of a challenge. I’m not quite able to dig into a full project, but I’m keen to make pictures.

So early Friday morning I decided to try to recreate William Eggleston’s tricycle picture. My neighbourhood is the exact same vintage as the one in the photo, and there are still lots of houses with carports. What could be easier, right? I just have to plunk a tricycle in front of a house with a carport and Bob’s yer uncle. As it happens, not so much.

On the way to take my older son to school, we passed a house whose driveway might work well. And there was even a blue trike tucked into a box or something. But I had only just met the owner of the house and I was shy about just knocking on her door. I had thought I knew the houses I wanted to use, but this one could be another option.

Then I started to wonder about what the right time of day might be. So I came home to study the light in the photograph. There isn’t much in the way of shadows and the sky is so white, I was a bit confused. It seems too bright to be an overcast day, don’t you think?  Today was mostly sunny here, but there were light clouds in the sky that sometimes passed over the sun that took away the shadows and made the light more diffuse. I had tried last night as the sun went down but it was too dark I’m pretty sure. So here’s today’s effort.

I’m not very happy with it but that’s partly because of the proportions of my trike and the solidity of its tires and partly the huge leafy trees. I see now, though, that I was too far from the houses. I probably needed to stand right in the middle of the street instead of the less busy spot I chose. But still… not bad.

This exercise has given me SO much more respect for Eggleston’s photo. For one thing, I’m quite certain he had to have the camera on the ground. I did, and the pavement killed my knees. I even cheated and used my live view mode (which I KNOW Eggleston didn’t have) so I didn’t have to put my chin on the ground. With my five-year-old on the corner holding the baby’s stroller and calling out every time a car came towards me, that would have been just too much. So how the hell did he compose the image so carefully? Before I went out and shot I tried to mark in my mind the geometric details of the composition. The roofline does not go along the third line, as you might expect – it’s somewhere between a third and a half. There are two windows to the right of the trike and two windows to the left. The car in the carport sits neatly in the space underneath the trike, and there’s just a hint of a bumper on the right edge of the frame. Just now I notice that the angle of the carport’s roof echoes the angle of the seat bar. There’s a wee patch of dried grass between the sidewalk the trike is on and the road, and the trees way behind the houses have no leaves.

Having tried to remake the photo, I find the original more beautiful than I ever did before. I mean, did he put his chin on the ground to look through the viewfinder or did he shoot it blindly? Of course, I expect he shot from the grass on the other side of the sidewalk, so perhaps his experience wasn’t so painful as mine. My appreciation for the photo grew especially knowing that Eggleston only takes one shot of each scene that strikes him. In Image Makers Image Takers he said, “A long time ago, I would have taken several shots of the same thing, but I realized that I could never decide which one was the best. I thought I was wasting a lot of time looking at these damn near identical pictures. I wanted to discipline myself to take only one picture of something, and if it didn’t work out, that’s just too bad. But it’s pretty much always worked.”

I’ll say. When I looked up the quote in the book before I started writing, I was pretty chuffed to read this as well: “If anything I would probably like the viewer to study the entire picture and everything that’s in it, where it’s placed, the composition. I would also hope that the image would register in the viewer’s mind after seeing it in print. It’s not even so much about remembering the image but seeing it.”

I may try again with this picture, but I’ll probably wait until after the leaves have fallen.

It’s been a long time since I went for a walk and just watched and listened. Yesterday I had the pleasure of two short walks of watching and listening – and one was with my camera. I learned why they call it fall:

Bits of black walnut shell fell like tear drops from a great height – a squirrel eating on a telephone wire.

A gust became a blizzard of maple keys.

A single leaf spiralled straight down.

I like noticing things like that. Also the woman in a white sweater with big pink roses who walked beneath a big tree whose leaves were half green and half pumpkin. I would never wear a sweater like that myself, but it clashed so gloriously with its surroundings.

I photographed none of that. Here is some of what I did photograph.

Supposedly the city’s going to cut down this dead tree

after the raccoons

I never get tired of RVs

Now that I’m at home so much more, I’m thinking a lot about picking up my neighbours project again. I stopped when the derby girls picked up for a couple of reasons. Time is an obvious one. But also, I was unsure of what I was trying to do, why I was making the pictures, how it would come together. I think I’m a lot clearer on that front, and I have new ideas for how to move forward on it.

The other day Pete Brook posted an interview with Michal Chelbin. I loved it not only because her portraits are stunning (you really must click through from the interview to the sneak preview) but because she’s so clear in what she’s trying to do, what works in her photography, why she photographs in Russia and the Ukraine, and why she’s drawn to photograph the people she does. I really believe it’s not enough to make beautiful pictures. You have to know why you photograph who, what and how you do. Alec Soth said that when he’s advising thesis students, it’s almost like getting the student on a therapist’s couch, seeking to understand their own work.

Anyways… my neighbourhood. I tried to leave last summer, but the deal fell through and nobody wanted our house anyways (I think that also contributed to stopping the neighbours project — how to continue when I don’t want to be here?). I don’t feel comfortable with the houses so far apart for some reason, and there are too many streets without sidewalks. Too many garages and central air conditioners and lawn maintenance companies. It’s hard to see the people here. But my son goes to a good school and it’s not a bad place. So I guess we’ll stay for a while. And while I’m here I will try to work on the neighbours project — I think it’s a little more amenable to life with a baby than the derby project where the subjects are a little further away…

I forgot to mention in my last post some good news I’ve recently received. The first was that some of my images were included in the group exhibition of F-Stop Magazine Issue 48 Relations.

The second is that I was named a finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass. This is a really interesting program that I think is great. You first pay an entry fee to go to the prescreening jury. This year, there were 20+ people on the prescreening jury. The jury chooses the top 20o finalists, whose work is then sent to an international jury of more than 200 jurors: photo editors, curators, publishers, gallery owners and other people involved in the industry. You pay an additional fee of $200 if you’re a finalist, but your work gets seen by a lot of people. This jury chooses the top 50, who I guess are the winners. A travelling exhibition is created from their work, and at least one of them wins a book award. So it’s less a competition and more a vehicle to get your work seen by the industry. What I like about the program is that you get something for your entry fee: everybody who enters gets a CD of all the entries and they also receive the final book(s) from the book award winner(s).

I entered in 2009. I didn’t become a finalist, and when I saw the CD, I saw why. So much of the submitted work was really great. It was inspiring to get to see it, and I learned a lot from that CD. I also felt quite vindicated when several of my favourites from the CD became part of the Top 50. (Dorothy Deiss, Jessica Todd Harper, Sarah Malakoff, and Rania Matar, I’m looking at you. And while I’m on the subject, if you’re at all interested in motherhood and/or the domestic in photography you really must check out Jessica Todd Harper’s work – it is absolutely stunning.) As well, I received the two books that were produced that year: Alejandro Cartagena’s Suburbia Mexicana and Birthe Piontek’s The Idea of North, which I’m particularly fond of.

Anyways, I’m so stoked to be a finalist.