Artist-on-Artist: Deedra Baker

Deedra Baker is a photographer and book artist currently residing in Denton, TX. Her creative work is based on source material that includes the research of historical and contemporary photographic processes, bookmaking, papermaking, and literature and explores themes of gender, self-identity, and sexuality via self-portraiture. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2011, from Washburn University in Topeka, KS and will receive her Master of Fine Arts with a photography concentration and intermedia secondary concentration at Texas Woman's University in May 2016. Deedra is the recipient of the Charles and Margaret Pollak Award and Sibberson Award from Washburn University and the Chancellor’s Student Research Scholar Award from Texas Woman’s University. Selections from her body of work have been featured nationally in exhibitions and publications including, Chowan University National Juried Exhibition, Light Leaked, PhotoSpiva National Photographic Competition and Exhibition, and Voyeur: Repositioning the Gaze.

Artist-on-Artist Interview conducted by Christine Zuercher. Check out Deedra's interview with Christine here: http://www.lightleaked.com/2016/04/artist-on-artist-christine-zuercher.html

Artist Statement: Ties That Bind 

Ties That Bind explores the nexus of my family through three generations of females. Through portraits, environmental still lifes, and landscapes, this series examines the interconnectedness between my mother, three sisters, two nieces, and myself. As an extension of the traditional family archive of snap shots, the work consists of color photographs, video, and a one-of-a-kind artist’s book to explore the relationships between the women of my family through our traditions, rituals, and the connection to a homeplace – the central or family home.

For the females within my immediate family and myself, the experiential and historical bond centered around the idea of a homeplace greatly influences and informs our identities. In her curatorial statement Not My Family Values, for an Art Photo Index Exhibition, Dr. Rebecca Senf states, “Family is at the heart of how we identify ourselves.” To create this work, I examined ways that my female family members’ identities interweave and manifest as a result of experiences together at our family home on 66 acres of land in rural Kansas. Intimate portraits capture the emotional, experiential, and physical bond found between we women, while environmental still life and landscape images made within my family’s house and land reflect the visceral connection between the females and the land, home, and familial keepsakes and objects.

Christine Zuercher: Your photographs often focus on very personal, quiet moments with your family. What experiences inspired you to make Ties That Bind?

Deedra Baker: Over the last couple of years I found my interests shift in regard to my work. I moved to Texas from Kansas, away from my family, and started a new journey in graduate school. I went from making self-portraits to appropriating family snap shots to photographing my preteen niece as a stand-in for myself. It was then that I realized my interest in photographing the females in my family. I have always been interested in the female form and the symbols that we carry through our keepsakes and personal treasures that we pass down through generations. My maternal grandmother passed away in March of 2013, just before I started graduate school, so I have been thinking a lot about the role of women in my family and the influences women have on the collective home. My separation from family also made me that much more in tune with our relationships and dynamics as I made trips back to visit. My father plays an important role in the family and has provided unconditional love and support to us, but it is truly we women that bind the family together.

CZ: This series shows a progression of seasons and people over time. What role does the passage of time play in your work?

DB: I have truly enjoyed making this work over the last two seasons. That is one thing I love about the Kansas landscape – there are four distinctive seasons. The passage of time is very symbolic for this work because it references the three generations of females present in the family. As I continue to create this work, the passage of time will only become more important as the photographs start to show the aging of the women, especially my nieces who are only fourteen and three years of age.

CZ: What are your thoughts on including your family, the land and animals in your exploration of place?

DB: Landscapes of the homeplace establish a connection between the women and the land that is the center for our relationship. In The Lure of the Local, art critic and writer Lucy Lippard, states, “The search for homeplace is the mythical search for the axis mundi, for a center, for some place to stand, for something to hang on to.” Ties That Bind documents the central or family home and its significance in the physical, emotional, experiential, and historical bond between three generations of women. The animals are very much a part of our experience with the land, as well.

CZ: What do you hope your audience will understand about your work and/or your family with Ties That Bind? 

DB: While this work is autobiographical and tells my family story, is also a universal exploration of familial connections and influences. Ties That Bind invites viewers to examine their own hereditary relationships and the influence these connections have on their own identities. Photographer Edward Steichen said, “The people in the audience looked at the pictures, and the people in the pictures looked back at them. They recognized each other. A Japanese poet has said that, when you look into a mirror, you do not see your reflection, your reflection, sees you.” The imagery from Daughters will act similarly, as a reflection to prompt memories for the viewers.

CZ: What role does the female play in your understanding of the traditional family and what female artists have inspired you to make this work?

DB: I think more than anything the female plays a significant role in the understanding of my own family. I know on a broader sense that everyone has experienced this notion of family in different ways, in which there cannot really be a tradition stated for the structure of family. A loving mother and father brought me up with three sisters on a ranch of 66 acres (or more at times). My father worked hard 365 days a year to provide financially for his family, but never missed a single one of our ball games, plays, or concerts. Yet, when I was thinking about my family and the work I wanted to create, I was most interested in the difference in dynamics between each sister and my mother – about the difference in relationships we sisters have with each other, and how now there are two third generation girls (my nieces).

Several historic and contemporary female photographers have influenced Ties That Bind, including: Julia Margaret Cameron, Gertrude Käsebier, Sarah Christianson, and Blake Fitch. Julia Margaret Cameron was inspired to photograph her family and friends in her studio; these subjects were a part of her daily life and therefore readily available to pose for Cameron. She was especially interested in photographing her niece, Julia Prinsep Jackson (Schirmer). Cameron’s portraits of women are intimate in their close compositions, soft focus, and dramatic lighting. Gertrude Käsebier’s subject matter was often her own family, children, and friends. Her interest in creating portraits of people stems from her longing “…to make likenesses that are biographies, to bring out in each photograph the essential personality that is variously called temperament, soul, humanity.” Through Sarah Christianson’s Midwestern upbringing, she developed a curiosity concerning the landscape of the Great Plains and is greatly affected by the sense of place found there. In her body of work, Homeplace, she documented her family’s 1200-acre farm in the Red River Valley of North Dakota (Christianson). Christianson photographed the farmland and family home, and combined her images with family archive documents and portraits. Blake Fitch’s photography has focused on themes of identity, rites of passage, civil rights, and belonging. In her body of work, Expectations of Adolescence, Fitch photographs her sister Katie and cousin Julia over a decade as they mature from adolescence to young adulthood.

CZ: How did you go about making your technical choices? Is there a connection between your use of visual aesthetics such as natural light, color, and the ideas you hope to share in this series?

DB: In making this work I knew I was going to be shooting digitally with a full-frame camera, so that I could have high-quality imagery. I also knew I wanted to use a shallow depth of field as often as possible to romanticize the figures, objects, or land. It is important to me to create this work in color because it reveals the specificity of my family, homeplace, and keepsakes. In general I am attracted to the aesthetic of beautiful natural lighting in photographs, so I was drawn to use a similar aesthetic in this project. Although, I must admit to using a fill flash a majority of the time for the indoor photographs to maintain a fast shutter speed and low ISO setting.

CZ: Your past work is primarily self-portraiture- what led to your change in focus? Do you consider this work self-portraiture?

DB: I have always found myself gravitating toward autobiographical content in my work. In the past, my work expressed my psychological and physical self through a literal portrayal via self-portraiture. Over the last two years, I became interested in turning the camera around and photographing my female family members to tell our collective story. I still think that Ties That Bind is extremely autobiographical, but tells a much broader story of my mother, sisters, nieces and self through our bonds around the homeplace.

CZ: What is next for you after you graduate?  Congratulations Deedra!

DB: Thank you, Christine! This is definitely an exciting time for me, which I am sure you can relate to that! I feel like I have so many opportunities and possibilities ahead of me. In the fall, I will be teaching three photography courses at Texas Woman’s University as an adjunct instructor. I am also now a gallery coordinator for Art Room Gallery, which is based in Fort Worth, TX. I am looking forward to teaching, working with fellow artists, and promoting Ties That Bind!

Deedra's thesis exhibition is currently on view at Texas Woman's University: 

Sharon Lee Hart

Sharon Lee Hart is a D.C. born fine art photographer and a professor at Florida Atlantic University. She earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her first monograph, Sanctuary: Portraits of Rescued Farm Animals was published in 2012. Hart’s photography and mixed media works have been exhibited throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Sharon Lee Hart's solo exhibition, According to the Sky, is currently on view until March 9, 2016 in conjunction with the Joyce Elaine Grant Exhibition at Texas Woman's University in Denton, TX. Hart was selected as the solo show award winner by April Watson, Curator of Photography The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO in 2015.

Artist’s Statement: According to the Sky

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.” — Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

This project is a meditation on the sea. Personal narratives are formed by filtering ideas about the sea through a variety of subjects, including mythology, astronomy and mysticism. The ocean is a link to the cosmos, a backdrop and central character. We live on a planet whose surface is mostly covered in water and in bodies that are at least half composed of water – we are physically and psychologically connected to the ocean. The photographs are made in the water and on the shore. The shoreline, our evolving human access point is where earth and sea meet. This constantly shifting border between the known and unknown can be seen as a metaphor for change. The photographs are toned to give a nod to traditional darkroom practices. Blue was chosen to reference the natural hydrological cycle and the color of the sea being in part a reflection of the sky. The images are made with a medium format film camera and a DSLR. The photographs are printed with archival inks on hand-coated hosho paper.

Interview conducted by Deedra Baker

Deedra Baker: Your series According to the Sky is inspired by the land and sea. Do you find inspiration from other sources like fellow artists, literature, experiences, etc?

Sharon Lee Hart: Absolutely! During this project, I was inspired by readings on mythology, astronomy, and mysticism. Certain essays in Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit resonate with me so deeply that I used a quote from the book in my project statement. During the paper coating and printing process I listened almost exclusively to the band Warpaint. Their sound set the mood and helped determine the tone of the photographs. Daydreaming while floating in the water and also being mercilessly tossed around in the waves impacted the project.

DB: How do you think about your selection of props in conjunction with the human figure? What part do they play in your “meditation on the sea?”

SLH: Many of the objects the human figures are interacting with were made or selected for their symbolism or cultural meaning. In my mind, the props elevate the figures into something magical or mythological. Props are used sparingly as I only wanted to include essential information; nothing extraneous allowed in the frame. Simplicity is part of the mediation.

DB: Describe your working methodology. What is your process for creating your photographs and decisions like square versus circular format and your choice of paper?

SLH: For the most part the idea was first, although it sometimes evolved while making the photograph. The circles reference a continuous cycle and planets. Squares are stable and represent a decisive cut from a scene. Printing is expressive and I had a very specific look in mind. After way too much experimentation with variations of paper and tones, I found that hand-applied emulsion on Hosho paper gave me the look I was after. I was drawn to the visible brush strokes and the way the ink melted into the paper.

Installation shots from According to the Sky, currently on view in conjunction with the Joyce Elaine Grant Exhibition at Texas Woman's University

DB: What is your editing process for creating a body of work and a solo exhibition?

SLH: The editing process was a bit different for this series, as I mostly knew what I wanted in advance, making the process easier than usual. For other projects, I have spent a good deal of time editing down, considering pairings, and sequence. Removing images from a series can be brutal, but satisfying. We all can get overly attached to certain images, so it is helpful to have a trusted pair of eyes look at your work and assist with editing.

The space that comes with a solo exhibition is exciting as it enables you to share your vision with an audience in a tangible way and hopefully start a dialogue. I also viewed this exhibition as an opportunity to experiment with small installations and 3D printing to give context to the photographs. Four of these installations are included in the exhibition.

DB: As a seasoned artist with a monograph and several solo exhibitions under your belt, do you have any advice for emerging photographers?

SLH: I still consider myself emerging, but am happy to share a few thoughts...

-Always select subjects that deeply resonate with you.

-Be aware of, but don’t follow trends.

-Take responsibly for the work you put out into the world.

-Experiment and allow yourself to make mistakes.

-If you are serious, you will always make time for your work. Build it into your schedule.

-Be able to place your work in historical and contemporary context.

-Allow yourself to be inspired by things outside of the art world.

-Acknowledge that no one makes work in a vacuum; we are all inspired by others.

-Be open to feedback, not everything will resonate, but when it does it will help propel your work forward.

-Don’t underestimate the amount of time and money it takes to produce, frame, package and ship work for a solo exhibition. Build in extra time for correcting mistakes and start setting aside funds as soon as possible.

-Have specific goals and a written timeline to help keep you on track.

Abbey Hepner

Abbey Hepner investigates the human relationship with landscape and technology. She considers issues related to population growth, man-made disasters, as well as the complex and often contradictory roles surrounding technological progress. She addresses psychological motivations existing in the gray area between political extremes and morally complex subjects. Her work illuminates the increasingly common use of health as a currency. Hepner holds bachelor’s degrees in Art and Psychology from the University of Utah and is currently in her final year of an MFA program in photography at the University of New Mexico.

Interview conducted by: Laura Addison A curator at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and previously at the New Mexico Museum of Art. She is also an independent writer on contemporary art and photography.

Laura Addison: Through several of her recent projects, Abbey Hepner has interrogated the nuclear industry, whether photographing decommissioned plants in Germany or making environmental portraits of an anime-like “nuclear mascot” in Japan in the months following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant disaster. She subsequently journeyed to various sites in the United States that send their nuclear waste to southern New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and printed those photographs as uranotypes, a 19th-century uranium-salt-based technology that tests viewers’ comfort zones while viewing landscape imagery that carries the threat of contamination. In her final series, Control Room, Hepner gained access to the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant and the surrounding rural Georgia community to examine the nuclear industry’s “renaissance” in spite of stories of disaster and contamination.

It’s no accident that you chose to pursue your graduate studies in New Mexico: birthplace of the atomic bomb, home of the first atomic bomb detonation at Trinity Site, and final resting place for the nuclear industry’s waste at WIPP. Can you talk about your decision to journey to some of the significant sites of nuclear history, among them New Mexico and Japan? What have you learned about place and landscape from these encounters?

Abbey Hepner: I created my first project on the topic of nuclear energy in Germany at the height of the decommissioning of nuclear power plants across the country. I was interested in what the landscape becomes after the towers fall and the buildings become inoperable. The industrial landscape is suddenly rendered impotent, but the land often remains dangerous for decades. Creating this work in Germany opened my eyes to many problems with nuclear energy that I wasn’t aware of before. It made me conscious of how misleading many U.S. news sources are, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown. That shift in awareness inspired me to investigate various facets of the nuclear energy industry.

In 2013, I volunteered in the Japanese disaster zone that was left from the 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Eisenhower’s Atoms For Peace Program in the 1950’s helped build Japan’s nuclear energy industry and so I was really interested in how my own culture as an American had influenced Japan. Nuclear propaganda in the U.S., with cartoons such as A is for Atom or Astro Boy, always seemed strange to me. Just as bizarre, I discovered that each of Japan’s nuclear plants had their own cute mascot characters. This led me to create my own fictional nuclear mascot that I photographed in different situations that referenced current nuclear concerns in Japan. In an act of public art intervention, I had an image of the character screened on a digital billboard in Shibuya Crossing, the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. In this photograph the character points out at the crowd of onlookers and then back at himself, raising a question about the role of media and propaganda in manmade disasters.

After coming back from Japan, I moved to New Mexico for graduate school. I left a place fresh with wounds from the nuclear industry and moved to a place filled with scars from it. I had gained a heightened sense of discomfort while in Japan. Many people are concerned about radiation but it’s extremely taboo to talk about it. I never knew if the land around me, or the food I ate was contaminated. I constantly discounted my own fears because I was another pair of hands to help and ultimately I could return home to a place I believed was safe. Newly immersed in the dry desert of the southwest, I started to question this illusion of safety. I realized that I had spent my entire life unknowingly living near nuclear sites that were filled with radioactive waste.

I love the work of artists like David Maisel, who takes beautiful aerial photographs of toxic landscapes. They are hauntingly alluring but they always suggested to me a certain otherness. In their grandiose scale and the nature in which they are made, they remained at a safe distance. What I feared was not the toxicity that appeared visibly contained within the borders of a photograph, but the invisible toxicity that existed in my backyard. The mundane and easily dismissible sites that have become a part of our modern life. I attempted to capture this anxiety in the series Transuranic. This is a series of 13 Uranotypes, an archaic photographic process that uses the radioactive chemical uranium instead of silver, from all the sites in the western U.S. that ship radioactive waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP is the nation’s only underground repository for radioactive waste. I traveled to each of the sites, documenting the locations and tracing the routes that radioactive waste is transported across our country on. In Transuranic I examine the citizen’s view of radioactive waste sites and their existence in the banality of everyday life.

Through these projects I have learned about the importance of going and bearing witness. I am increasingly aware of the connections between history and place and how often we repeat our mistakes. In February of 2014, an accident at WIPP forced it to shut down. Our nation has no solutions for the containment of radioactive waste and yet we are now in the nuclear renaissance, beginning to construct more nuclear plants. Two new nuclear energy reactors are currently being built at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the first to be built in over 30 years. Interested in these issues, I spent time in Georgia photographing the residents, plant workers and inside Plant Vogtle. I was genuinely interested in the community and the influx of thousands of temporary workers constructing the plant.

LA: What do you see as the connective tissue among your various series? There seems to be more at play than nuclear legacy.

AH: I am interested in the human relationship with landscape and technology. I examine our demands on technology and the result when it fails us. In an ever-increasing technological world we rely less on nature and less on each other. Our health is often the currency in these transactions. My own cognitive dissonance plays a big role in my work, I love technology and I demand far too much of it. I am also fascinated by nuclear history and many of my closest friends are nuclear engineers. Ultimately, I aim to provoke the viewer. Through humor, absurdity and confrontation, I encourage an examination of subject matters that are often taboo.

LA: How has your background in psychology informed your artwork, if at all?

AH: My examinations come from concern about health but I am also interested in why people believe the things they do. In addition to provoking my viewer, I am also interested in rescripting mediums and experiences. “Imagery Rescripting” is used in cognitive behavioral therapy and uses imagined images to intervene on traumatic memories. I often choose my medium in an act of rescripting. For example, using a billboard to critique media and propaganda in Nuclear Mascot or using the radioactive element uranium to create prints in Transuranic. By rescripting, I suggest that it is not the material itself that is the cause of evil but the hand that controls it and I attempt to alter its pathology. This seems like a natural evolution, as I worked in a cognitive psychology research lab for years studying Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

LA: Your recent experiments with bioluminescence seem to be a departure from your photographic series. Can you talk about this series and the ways in which you use technology as process and subject matter?

AH: My primary artistic mediums are electronic art and photography. They are both tools in which I investigate the human relationship with the landscape and technology but they also speak to my fascination with light and electricity. Nuclear Illuminations is a series of biological street lamps. One street lamp is made with bioluminescent algae and two path lights are made with bioluminescent bacteria. The lamps have servos in them and they are connected to microcontrollers that are activated when nuclear-related keywords appear on Google and Twitter. The bioluminescent organisms illuminate when the microcontrollers trigger the servos and the liquid is agitated. Viewers see the biolights illuminate when the online conversations are active and they can also participate in the conversation on twitter and see the result in real-time.

After the Fukushima accident, scientists had discovered green microalgae in the waters around the plant. That strain of algae has the ability to accumulate radioactive nuclides including iodine, strontium and cesium, from water and soil in the heavily contaminated area in Fukushima. Algae may be one of nature’s ways of remediating the damage that has been caused by the nuclear disaster. After working with toxic chemicals in photography I wanted to create a project using organisms that remediate the environment. Once again I am thinking about methods of rescripting in terms of process. Technology plays a role in using virtual conversations to trigger the biological light. I am suggesting that perhaps we heal through conversation and through demanding transparency when it comes to our health.