peripheral vision

“Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order’s tall”
from “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver

Two weeks ago, I discovered Bon Iver’s album, For Emma, Forever Ago. Immediately I had it on nearly constant repeat, much to my husband’s delight. “Skinny Love” played in my mind while I slept the first few nights after hearing it.

Why don’t you just have a listen to it while you read this post?

Isn’t it absolutely beautiful?

I actually bought the album off itunes, so I could listen to it during my labour. Luckily for my husband and attendants, my labour went so quickly that it only repeated about eight or ten times. I’ll try not to go into details, since this isn’t that kind of blog, but I will say that labour and birth were a transcendent and healing experience for me. I actually kind of enjoyed it. There were definitely parts I didn’t enjoy, and there were moments when I felt overwhelmed and I just wanted to stop the whole production. But my support team was awesome, and whatever they said or did, those overwhelming moments stayed just moments and I was able to get past them. But I felt really powerful and like I was really coping well and that is a good feeling. I felt like a rock star for about two solid days after.

My first son was born by emergency c-section after 12 hours of fear-filled and difficult labour. So birthing my second son meant venturing into the unknown. One of my biggest fears going into this birth was that the baby would go into distress and I would have to push him out under duress. I didn’t think I could handle the pressure. I told my midwife, “If the baby goes into distress, just cut me. Don’t fuck around. I don’t want to labour with that kind of fear again.” What do you know, but the fear was realized. His heart started to slow down too much, but I was fully dilated so the midwife told me I just had to push the baby out. The funny thing was I wasn’t scared at all. The midwife was so calm that I figured if she thought *I* was this baby’s best chance, who was I to challenge her? So I just did it. Turned out it was just because the cord was around his neck and he was absolutely fine once he was born.

For decades I had a recurring nightmare/anxiety dream where a tornado was bearing down on whatever building I was in. In the dream I was helpless to do anything but watch, terrified, and wait to see if it was going to hit me or my neighbour. I knew I had turned a corner with my anxiety and panic when I stopped feeling afraid in the dream. In my most recent tornado dream (which I think I had sometime during my pregnancy), the tornado came when I was standing in an open field with nothing but a falling-down shack nearby for shelter, and I chose to stay out in the open rather than risk the flying debris of the shack. This birth felt kind of like that.

Right after he was born, I said, “That wasn’t that bad!” And everyone looked at me like I was crazy, because I’d been quite loud throughout the labour and I’d had some really hard parts. I really meant the actual birth part, which I kept thinking was going to get worse and suddenly he popped out and it hadn’t gotten worse.

It’s like the sun was shining out my ass.

I need to give a shout out to my doula, Jody Cummins-Lambert. I felt like she’d earned her fee before I even went into labour, and she offered perfect support throughout labour. I know a lot of people thought it was a bit redundant having a doula along with midwives, but it wasn’t at all. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re planning a hospital birth. She stayed in the background so my husband could be my primary support, and she helped him figure out what I needed. She also helped enormously on day 2 postpartum, bringing me witch hazel and epsom salts and throwing in a load of laundry.

I have one more thing to say. Having now experienced a highly medicalized, necessarily surgical birth and a natural birth where I was allowed to find my own rhythm and ways of coping, I feel like the attitude of “as long as you have a healthy baby, it doesn’t matter how the baby enters the outside world” does a real disservice to women. Of course, no mother would choose a better experience for themselves at the expense of their baby’s health. But the experience matters. Having a lousy birth experience is a big deal, and I think we need to do a better job of helping women have better birth experiences, supporting women during the postpartum period generally, but especially after a traumatic birth. For me, it wasn’t until I was pregnant with my second son that I acknowledged all the emotional stuff related to my first son’s birth. And the most helpful people I spoke to about it told me the best thing was to simply acknowledge the fears. I expected to feel fear during labour or have flashbacks to my first son’s birth, but it never happened, probably because it felt so different.

13 days postpartum, I may not be in the most objective position, but I think birthing a baby may be just about the most powerful thing a woman can do. I don’t want to be exclusive and deny pain medication to anyone or anything like that, but there’s a lot more we can do to make birth better for women. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something I explore in my photography down the road.

I’m one of the 2011 Flash Forward winners!

Over the years, Flash Forward has selected great photographers to be part of its annual book and exhibition – people like Donald Weber, Laura Pannack and Katrina d’Autremont, whose work I adore. This year’s list of winners has tremendous talent on it again (Ben Roberts, Kurt Tong and Matt Eich to name just a few), so I’m delighted and amazed to be on it too.

I don’t know if anyone’s interested, but here are some installation shots from my show. It’s still up until May 2 at the Elora Centre for the Arts. (Ok, I promise to stop beating the dead horse now.)

Here is some of Sophie Hogan’s beautiful work. I think our two bodies of work talked to each other in interesting ways.

Thursday’s opening of my and Sophie’s show was really great. We had a great turnout, a number of derby girls showed up, and I didn’t make an ass of myself talking about my work.

Em Pale, me, Leigh-zzie Borden and Inna’Goddesss Da-Vida – and the top of my son’s head

The curator, Phil Irish, did a sort of interview format for the artist talks, which made it really easy for me, and I suspect more engaging for the audience. I just had to answer his questions. Once upon a time, I hated talking about my work. Although I make my living with words, there’s a reason I make images; there’s something I’m trying to express that I can’t find the words for. I discovered on Thursday that now I really like talking about my work. Partly it’s experience: I have a better understanding of my own work and what’s going on in it. But it’s also partly practice. My process for this project is that I first meet the derby girl in her home. I scope out the space and light and get to know her a bit. I also tell her all about my project, why I started, what I’m hoping to do with it, things that I’m thinking about. It’s interesting because I’m coming up on a year since I started the project, and my thinking has changed and deepened over the course of the experience. I’m really starting to get the value of working on a project long-term. Your thinking changes and refines but you still have the early pictures, which may or may not fit with your later thinking.

me talking

(I just got my hair shorn off a coupla weeks ago, and my son mostly clung to my leg while I talked. I think he was kinda proud of me. Have I mentioned I’m pregnant? I think the belly has become quite unmistakable.)

As well, both Sophie’s work and mine look pretty great on the wall, if I do say so myself. It’s so interesting that we’ve pursued our projects completely independently, but putting the work in the same room really creates a dialogue.

I didn’t really take enough pictures. I’ll have to go back and get proper installation shots another time. But the show is up until May 1 if you want to spend a bit of time in the charming village of Elora.

gratuitous kid shot

I also have to say my son was AWESOME. We stayed until 10 pm and he behaved well the whole time. Even though for the last hour he kept asking me when we could go home, and I kept telling him, soon. Finally he says, “When’s soon going to be over?!” But no meltdowns.

So… See you tomorrow night?

Hard Knocks
Sophie Hogan and Kate Wilhelm

March 24 – May 1, 2011
Opening Reception – Thursday March 24, at 7:30 pm
Minarovich Gallery – Elora Centre for the Arts
Curated by Phil Irish

People are not always what they seem – and their true identities are often the reward of struggle, belonging, and even aggression.  These two photographers, Sophie Hogan and Kate Wilhelm, have each developed an interest in a subculture and, by seeking connection there, have found compelling relationships and insights about the struggles and strength of identity.

Teenagers develop the art of keeping parts of their lives secret, yet they are strikingly candid when Sophie Hogan is working her camera.  Her series Night Shots is an investigation into the sociology of teen culture, including the emotionally turbulent terrain of friendships and exclusions, love and crushes, lust and loss and “the raw energy of uncertainty of being young.”  These works are created with the co-operation, perhaps even collaboration, of a circle of teens who have accommodated Hogan into their hidden lives.  These images are not documentary in tone, but employ lighting and gesture to narrative effect, immersing us in the nocturnal emotions of adolescence.

Kate Wilhelm is hooked on roller derby, in part because it “throws the received, cultural notions of femininity in your face.”  The Derby Girls adopt performance names and wardrobes, building alternate identities as they engage in one of the few contact sports available to women.  Wilhelm’s striking portraits of Derby Girls don’t place them in the aggression of a bout, but in their private domestic spaces.  The incongruity of setting a Derby Girl persona in a quiet moment, or with family members, or nursing a baby, calls our stereotypes into question.  While these formally posed images may seem like a “scientific” catalogue of a social type, Wilhelm’s eye for suggestive detail provides a unique set of clues and questions within each portrait.  We puzzle through the clues in search of the Derby Girl’s complex identity, finding an unconventional freedom and strength in the lives these women have constructed.

***
Sophie Hogan studied Photographic Arts at Ryerson.  Her practice as a portrait photographer extends into conceptually rich series, including the exhibition and book My Elora: The Grace of Belonging.  The recipient of a Canada Council Grant, she also won first prize at the Insights exhibition last year.  Her work will be featured at the Gladstone Hotel again for Contact 2011 (Toronto) in May.

Kate Wilhelm holds a B.A. from the University of Guelph.  Her work has been exhibited locally and internationally, including Mother/mother-* (New York), and New Normal (Colorado). Oshawa’s public gallery, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, will feature her work in 2012.  Wilhelm was born in 1976 and lives in Guelph, Ontario with her husband and son.

Media Contact: Arlene Saunders. 519.846.9698

Minarovich Gallery, Elora Centre for the Arts
75 Melville Street, Elora Ontario N0B 1S0
T: 519.846.9698
www.eloracentreforthearts.ca
media contact: Arlene Saunders

Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Friday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Weekends 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Derbygirls Blog has been featuring guest posts by derby girls about what drew them to the sport initially and what keeps them in it. This post by Rachel MadHo about being queer and a derby girl stood out to me in particular, especially this part:

“Within the derby community, minority though I may still be, I am neither invisible nor spectacle. I can’t think of another context where being a minority does not mean being in the margins. My difference, my queerness, is known and acknowledged—yet I am not treated like the Other. Most of my leaguemates see the real me, and appreciate instead of gawking. They get it. Even the straight ones.

“Because, I think, there is a queerness about rollergirls—whatever their gender preference in partners. There is an understanding that as women, the world we’ve been given and the roles we’ve been assigned aren’t quite right, don’t quite fit. There is a determination to do things differently, to in fact do everything we aren’t supposed to do: act out, speak up, take up space, know ourselves and be true to ourselves, own our sexuality and whatever it means to us, fight for what we want instead of accepting what we get, always have each other’s backs.”

A day or two before that post showed up in my reader I was just remarking to myself that my latest images are feeling awfully heteronormative to me, and I don’t want that. So at some point I’m going to have to seek out queer derby girls. It feels a bit mercenary but I think it’s important to include that perspective.

* * *

I’ve been working on editing my show coming up in March. Editing is HARD. Especially with this derby girls series, where I have some definite ideas I want to get across. I find myself getting attached to particular items in a derby girl’s home, and I want to use the images with those things in them even if they don’t really work. I can’t seem to get any distance from the things… is there a word for inappropriate attachments to things? To give you a few more examples, I’ll start with Lawna Mower who I photographed a week or two ago:

I love the Barbie/pageant winner topping her tree. But I wish I’d chosen a better height for my camera because I’m pretty sure nobody else’s eye will go there. And there’s too many angles for my taste.

I love the tinsel on her light cord, the repeating lines of the plates in her dish rack and the vintage high chair. But they’re all a little too far apart and too close to the edge of the frame. (I’m constantly crushing myself into corners to try to fit stuff in…)

This is probably the best picture from the shoot. The light was nice, but the only thing I was attached to was her green toille (?) curtains, which I couldn’t fit in anyways. What to do?

Of the images you’ve seen before, I offer these confessions.

I LOVE Suzy Slam’s candle. Is there a name for that gesture? (I also love her socks!) But I think she’s just a little too centred in the frame somehow.

Baroness von Spike’s husband is a famous cartoonist and I just loved seeing the word Gynecology on the wall. But do you even notice it?

Hey! Maybe you can help me out. Will you tell me if you even noticed the things I love? That might be a first step to letting go.

Anyways, editing is HARD. I wish there were resources to help, but I haven’t seen any. Don Weber and Alec Soth are both great editors, imho, and they’ve both helped me, but I’m pretty sure it’s such an intuitive thing you can’t really teach it.

So it’s the start of a New Year. I’m not sure what to make of 2010. My first impulse was that it was a fantastic year — and it was, photographically, especially towards the end. I won a prize at RMG Exposed (which I didn’t get around to mentioning here, although I did tweet about it) and I’ve been invited to participate in a three-person show at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in summer 2012. I’m also going to be in a two-person show at the Elora Arts Centre this March. I made good progress on a project that brings me into the homes of intriguing women. And of course, I got to meet and hang out with and learn from Alec Soth for five days in May! That was probably the highlight of the year.

But then I started to remember the disappointments. The disillusionment and disappointment of our trip to South Africa — even though, granted, nothing really bad happened. The first half of the year I was a big anger ball, especially at my day job, though it spilled over into the rest of my life. In July we almost bought a house in our favourite part of downtown, but then the deal fell through and our current house didn’t sell anyways, and we couldn’t find anything else that interested us in our price range. In August I fell into a mildish depression, likely a combination of burnout from the first part of the year and disappointment that we weren’t moving forward on plans that could support future life changes. My day job got better in September with a series of projects that were big enough for me to get my teeth into but finished in a few weeks each so I could feel a sense of accomplishment. And I got pregnant, which is good, even if I did feel poisoned by the little parasite until very recently. And of course, it’s also scary as hell, given that my son didn’t sleep for five hours straight until he was 17 months old, and then it was just occasionally. I’m not even exaggerating.

So… 2010. I have friends for whom the year was much, much worse to them, so I’m not really complaining. But there’s definitely significant room for improvement for 2011 (please let it include a baby who sleeps well). Photography-wise, my goal for this year is to keep shooting. My goal for 2010 was to finish a project, and I’m not sure I really achieved that, although I did close the project with John. At any rate, I’m not troubled by that anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if the derby girls keep me busy and engaged beyond 2011.

This morning I photographed a derby girl for the first time since early October. It felt good. This is Vixcyn and her family:

So how was 2010 for you and what are you hoping for from 2011?

Most of the women I’ve photographed so far in my derby project have belonged to the Venus Fly Tramps. Except for Greta Garbage and Blister Sister. Greta Garbage belongs to the Vicious Dishes, which is with the same league as the Venus Fly Tramps, and Blister Sister is with the fledgling league in my own town. This is Blister Sister (I don’t think you’ve seen her before).

Last night was the last bout of the season for both the Venus Fly Tramps and the Vicious Dishes – it was a double header. In an effort to see if more derby girls were interested in participating in my project, I decided to host a little mini exhibition in the lobby of the arena. It also gave me a deadline for making prints, and I was keen to see my work in print. Here are some installation shots:

Oh look! There’s Blister Sister standing in front of her picture:

I spent the week obsessing over how to hang unframed prints on the wall surfaces without damaging the prints that when I finally found a solution Saturday morning, I panicked. People would see my work! Large! They might mock me!

Of course, I needn’t have worried. By all accounts, it was a rousing success. It was VERY satisfying to see my work on the walls, I’ve got names of a bunch more women to photograph, and my son had a blast holding court with so many new people.

Here he is looking like a pirate.

He also enjoyed the bout. “I want you to do roller derby!” he said. The only thing that could have made the night better was if the Tramps had won. They played a great game and were even in the lead in the second half, but they lost to one insane jam by the other team. We had to leave before the Vicious Dishes’ game to get the lad to bed, but I heard this morning they won, completing their second undefeated season.

Wow. There’s been quite a flood of traffic here over the last few days, but it’s slowing down now. Last week I corresponded a bit with the author of 500 Photographers about some of the issues I mentioned in my recent post about women in photography. He refused my request for permission to quote some of his emails here, saying that he didn’t want to enter the discussion publicly because he doesn’t know enough on the subject and his blog was never intended to engage in that subject. I suppose I could quote him without his permission, but I’d prefer not to.

Still, the correspondence got to me. On the same day, I attended training at work about the requirements of new legislation regarding workplace violence and harassment. The training raised three stories from the last decade(ish) involving workplace violence and harassment. Two of the three stories involved women being harassed by men in positions of power in their workplace while their employers did virtually nothing. Lori Dupont and Theresa Vince. They are horrible stories. When I got home, I got a package in the mail from one of the derby girls I photographed. She had a document on her fridge when I went to her home called Domestic Violence Bill of Rights. She left an abusive relationship three years ago, and she still needs this reminder on her fridge. I asked if I could have a copy of it for my project, and she was happy to oblige. She said, “Every time I think about throwing it out, I put it back on the fridge.” When I opened her envelope the other day, it was the original that she sent, while she kept the copy. So it was a heavy day.

The next day, a friend sent me to this book review. It is worth reading. No doubt the book is worth reading too. I’ll do it when I’m feeling less raw.

Anyways… Friday was my day off, and I was still thinking about women and photography. I decided to do the numbers on resources that I think represent women fairly well. I also want to find out more about how many women are studying and practicing photography, to see how those compare with the people getting shown, but I think that will take more effort. Anyways, I emailed Flak Photo to see if there was an easier way to count the contributors, like a textual list of names or something. As part of the correspondence, I gave him a link to my post, and he decided to broadcast it through his channels. It caught me off guard, because it’s such a rambly and barely coherent piece of writing, but now people are commenting on it and discussing it elsewhere too.

Most of the discussion seems to be happening on Flak Photo’s facebook page and in the comments on the original post. But it’s also happening on flickr here and a little bit on the original thread I referenced. It seems to be dying down now.

I spent a couple hours counting the proportion of women on Flak Photo and Fraction Magazine. They both show photography I like, so it was quite enjoyable. My numbers were off on Fraction, as the editor, David Bram, pointed out in the comments to my post. He got 43 percent. My counting on Flak is probably a bit off too, but it’s a large enough sample size that it’s probably reasonable. On Flak, I went back to Nov. 1, 2009 and counted 211 photographers in total that have been shown since then. 41 percent of them are women.

Also, one of the admins from La Familia Abrazada asked for clarification of my comment that the photos of mine that got in were cheesy or overly sentimental. When I went through the photos that made it in the pool, I realized there were two that made it in that I quite like and think are good photos and not cheesy. But two made it in that I do think are cheesy. Don’t get me wrong, I like them. As pictures of my kid. But not as fine art photography. Anyways… I would share the images, but I don’t want to sidetrack the conversation, which I never really intended to be about my work. Some commenters, particularly on the facebook thread, have gone down that rabit hole, and honestly, I’m fine with the idea of my work being crap. I don’t think it’s all crap, but I’m not convinced that the photos I posted in my post are at all good. I’m still very early in my journey, and I still have a lot to learn. Maybe I would be more concerned about people thinking my work is bad if I was further along in my journey, but I’m not. I guess I just needed to get that bit off my chest.

We live in a sexist world. I was about to get sidetracked into a rant about how thoroughly our society encodes gender in our children despite our best efforts, but thanks to the delete key, I just saved you from it. So I will just say, read this book review.

On Monday night I went to Greta Garbage’s home. I think this is my favourite shot:

But I’m also pretty fond of these:

She’s studying woodworking at college, and she actually made that cabinet on the right. With her own hands.

A couple weeks ago, I went to Gunmoll Mindy’s home.

I swear, people’s pets are SUCH prima donnas. They always want to be in the shot. Most of the time I let them, although more often than not they’re right on the edge of the frame, just an unidentifiable lump of fur. So I say all the way in or all the way out.

Someone asked me the other day what the families of the derby girls think of my project. I leave it up to the derby girl who they want to participate. Sometimes they leave it up to their family members… anyways, I have to say pretty much everyone has been totally open and willing. I have gotten the sense occasionally, that the family members aren’t exactly excited to be involved, but I haven’t encountered any resistance.

* * *

I’ve been feeling pretty raw for most of the week. I seem to be taking the world’s wrongs almost personally. And I’m getting SO sick of the unintentional argument. That if you didn’t intend to exclude or insult some demographic or individual, it’s ok. You just need to apologize and be done with it, and don’t worry about, you know, actually CHANGING your behaviour in the future or becoming more aware of your prejudices.

* * *

On the plus side, I finally submitted work to a competition. I’ve had all kinds of calls for entry marked in my calendar all summer long. But every time the deadline comes I decide all my work sucks and it would just be a waste of my money to submit. I was probably right, but I do think the process of submitting is good for my work, because it forces me to edit my work, write or refine my statement about it, and think about what works and what doesn’t work in it. If I didn’t have deadlines I probably would never get around to it, because I much prefer the early stages of a project when it’s all ideas and optimism. I also like having the possibility of winning to look forward; it’s kind of like buying a lottery ticket that way.

* * *

Last night we found a bird’s nest by the side of the road. It had someone’s (ours?) laundry lint incorporated into its roundness.