It's so odd to live as I do right now -- sitting on the same deck of the same cabin where Hayhook was taken. There is no electricity, no
running water, no telephone. Not even a cell phone will work where we are.
So, I come in from time to time, driving across the 450 acres, as pristine as any land in your imagination, and I plug into my electronic life: faxes, e-mail, telephones, and so forth. When I did so yesterday, I came across your letter [inquiring about the use of pictures from Immediate Family] and Noelle's article.
Over the years I've learned not to talk about my work, taking to heart the Robert Doisneau quote that goes something like this: "If you make pictures, don't speak, don't write, don't analyze yourself and don't answer any questions." I would amend that by adding, "And don't read any critical comments, either." People always seem to freight the work so heavily with meanings that were not in any way intended or even subconscious.
So when I ignored my own advice and read Noelle's piece, I did so initially with indignation: What is all this talk about oppressed peoples? Conquered tribes?? Torture victims??? If my children didn't have better things to do, I'm sure they'd love to rebut all the bullshit that comes pouring out of academia about my work . . . But, still, Noelle's piece was better than some, and she did make some interesting points. At least she didn't see repressed memories of incest as my artistic motivation.
It's not like these kids had to keep some shred of personal dignity squirreled away from their prying Mom's camera lens. They were -- and are still -- active participants in the art-making that goes on all around them. Art is in every aspect of our everyday life -- in the gardens we have designed around the house, in what we put on our walls, in the pumpkins we cut for Halloween. And any parent knows that you can't force a child to make art; they have to cooperate, they have to want to be part of the process. When we made these pictures, the kids knew exactly what to do to make an image work: how to look, how to project degrees of intensity or defiance or plaintive, woebegone, Dorthea-Lange dejection. I didn't pry these pictures from them -- they gave them to me. Remember that and the images take on a wholly different meaning -- no deep psychological manipulations or machinations, just the straight-forward, everyday telling of a story.
I am reminded of when Eudora Welty came to Hollins. The back of the class was filling up with these guys in beards, academic types. As she read this short story in which one female character presents another with a marble cake, you could see one of the beards getting all excited. He started waving his hand as soon as she stopped reading and said, "Miz Welty, how did you come up with that powerful symbol of the marble cake, with the feminine and masculine and the Freudian and the Jungian all mixed together like that?" -- his doctoral thesis probably hanging on this. And Welty, this wonderful little old lady, just looked at him for a really long time from the lectern. Finally she said, "Well, you see, it's a recipe that's been in my family for some time."
I guess I'm a little like that.
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf
Question 2
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Naomi Wolf
Question 3
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
Sally Mann
Question 4
A. M. Homes
James Kincaid
Judith Levine
Michael Medved
Stephen Schiff
Celine Texier-Rose
