Interviews

C.S. : What helped you in the moment of dealing with the loss of a relative?

J.L. : The only thing that truly helps when you lose someone you love is time. In the first days and weeks of the death of a loved one simply getting through each day feels monumental.

C.S. : Have you experienced the typically viewed as “The Five Stages of Grief”, cited in the book On Grief and Grieving by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, to say Denial, Anger, Bargaining(the “if onlys”), Depression and Acceptance? Do you agree on defining a determined “manual” of the phases of grieve?

J.L. : I’m not sure that applies to every single person as described. I do think you go through a lot of those stages, in different ways and not necessarily in order… and for me personally I experienced times of feeling ok and not focusing on my loss for long stretches. Then something reminds you of them and you’re back to feeling the same way you did the moment you found out. This happens on and off for years and likely always will.

C.S. : Do you think art can be beneficial during mourning?

J.L. : I always thought it must, but it wasn’t until I experienced it in action that I can definitively say, yes. I can only speak for myself but it channeled all of my confused and sad feelings into a focused purpose. I cried my way through the majority of creating this series but I also laughed and remembered stories and moments I may not have otherwise. Her belongings took on heightened meaning after I spent so much time with them working on this and instead of representing only my loss they now remind me of a very creative period in my life. I certainly didn’t expect that, and I’m so thankful for it.

C.S. : Do you believe that your culture, your framework of intelligibility, influences the way you experience and perceive death and grieve over the loss of someone?

J.L. : I think the cultural cues you grow up with in terms of how death is dealt with certainly influences your experience. Americans tend to not want to really deal with the messy emotions of death and are expected to “move on” rather quickly from the grieving process. Because my mother was Irish and I had attended other Irish funerals and wakes, my process for mourning her was steeped in both sadness for my loss and joy in reliving the stories and history with her, which is more of an Irish way than American.

C.S. : For your personal projects, did you draw inspiration from any artist, text, documentary, etc...?

J.L. : Yes I do and for each project it’s different. Since these images were not part of a thought out body of work when it began I didn’t really look to any predecessors for artistically dealing with personal objects after the death of someone. I do have a long standing interest in the Victoria era Memento Mori death imagery, so that might have played into my original idea. This series has often been compared to photographer Catherine Opie’s work, 700 Nimes Road, a series of images photographed in Elizabeth Taylor’s former Bel-Air estate. It touches on a lot of the same impulses, creating a portrait of someone through the things left behind.

C.S. : Do you think that personal emotions, usually intense during the processing of the death of a relative, can interfere with what the artist wants to convey against what the viewer perceives? Have you personally experienced it?

J.L. : I think personal emotions are never interfering with any artist’s work but are instead contributing to their creations.

C.S. : Do you think that after exposure to an artistic project on the mourning of a relative the viewer can feel "guided" or “healed”? Would you feel entitled to be the guide?

J.L. : This work is deeply personal and my hope was that by being vulnerable about my personal loss I would reach someone else struggling but I would not consider myself a guide into mourning for anyone but myself. Connection through art is emotional rather than factual.

C.S. : As an artist, would you feel accountable for having triggered “sad” or “melancholic” emotions on your spectators?

J.L. : As an artist you hope that all of your work provokes a reaction. That reaction is based on the experiences of the viewer and not something an artist can manipulate anymore than what they are presenting to their audience.

C.S. : How did you decide the form you were going to give to your research? Have you considered particular factors when deciding how to share it?

J.L. : I can credit this body of work with shifting my entire creative process as a photographer towards a more conceptual approach. Prior to this I was a fairly straightforward photographer working in the documentary tradition.
This project was a way for me to creatively work through the grief and fear of losing someone so important in my life. When faced with what to do with my mom’s belongings the idea of photographing them seemed like a natural step. Simultaneously I was helping my father clean and organize their apartment and was tasked with going through all of the old family photographs. It was then that I started recognizing some of the objects of hers that I had kept, in the photographs. I began pairing objects with images and playing around with the connections between the two.
Having only worked within the confines of traditional documentary photography it was incredibly freeing to utilize a more conceptual approach. I don’t think I would have come to this realization if I had not been so overwhelmed that I didn’t have the energy to second-guess my instinct. Not having any expectations for what I was doing, beyond focusing my grief creatively also helped expand my ideas on how photography can tell a story.
What began as a personal exercise I now consider the first chapter in a series of projects (GYRLE, VERHEXHEN) that I’ve done exploring the construction of female identity through the use of archival materials and historical narrative.