Roots Study, September 2024. Please read the description.
Alternate edit of the previous image.
Photographed on Ilford FP4+ and developed in PMK
Camera used: Intrepid 8x10 with the f4.5 Kodak Ektar 12" lens. Exact exposure details not recorded, but probably 20 seconds or more at f22 or thereabouts.
I’ve recently had a realization about the tree roots work I’ve been doing in the Marys River over the past 7 years: there’s a connection between what I’m doing (the act of wading deep in the river to make the photographs, perhaps more than the photographs themselves) and something from my distant past that apparently I’ve never really come to terms with. This is difficult to talk about.
When I was maybe 7 or 8 we were spending the summer at the family’s cottage - my mother and brother and I. We had a cat with us that summer (a cat I remember nothing about - no name, nothing, which is surprising) and she was pregnant. One warm summers evening, she gave birth to 4 or 5 kittens. I have a vague memory of the cat giving birth in a cardboard box under the kitchen sink. The next thing I remember is my mother carrying a pillowcase with something in it down to the lake and telling me not to follow her. But I did follow her a few moments later, in time to see her holding the pillowcase under the water. The only thing I remember after that is that she cried about what had happened. I didn’t understand what she’d done, or what happened to the kittens. She’d drowned them, of course. We couldn’t keep them - we didn’t have the financial resources to care for so many cats (and I doubt my father would have tolerated them). I don’t remember if my mother explained what happened or if I just figured it out, but I understood, and I was changed by this understanding. I couldn’t understand how my mother could have done such a thing. It created a huge question mark in my psyche about the nature of our species that I wouldn’t have any kind of answer for until much later in my life.
I’ve realized there’s some psychological connection between my memory of this event and my exploring the river to make photographs of the trees, reaching into the water with their arms/roots. It makes me think of my mother’s arms holding that pillowcase underwater. It’s shocking how events from our early lives shape who we become and guide our pursuits in later life.
Roots Study, September 2024. Please read the description.
Alternate edit of the previous image.
Photographed on Ilford FP4+ and developed in PMK
Camera used: Intrepid 8x10 with the f4.5 Kodak Ektar 12" lens. Exact exposure details not recorded, but probably 20 seconds or more at f22 or thereabouts.
I’ve recently had a realization about the tree roots work I’ve been doing in the Marys River over the past 7 years: there’s a connection between what I’m doing (the act of wading deep in the river to make the photographs, perhaps more than the photographs themselves) and something from my distant past that apparently I’ve never really come to terms with. This is difficult to talk about.
When I was maybe 7 or 8 we were spending the summer at the family’s cottage - my mother and brother and I. We had a cat with us that summer (a cat I remember nothing about - no name, nothing, which is surprising) and she was pregnant. One warm summers evening, she gave birth to 4 or 5 kittens. I have a vague memory of the cat giving birth in a cardboard box under the kitchen sink. The next thing I remember is my mother carrying a pillowcase with something in it down to the lake and telling me not to follow her. But I did follow her a few moments later, in time to see her holding the pillowcase under the water. The only thing I remember after that is that she cried about what had happened. I didn’t understand what she’d done, or what happened to the kittens. She’d drowned them, of course. We couldn’t keep them - we didn’t have the financial resources to care for so many cats (and I doubt my father would have tolerated them). I don’t remember if my mother explained what happened or if I just figured it out, but I understood, and I was changed by this understanding. I couldn’t understand how my mother could have done such a thing. It created a huge question mark in my psyche about the nature of our species that I wouldn’t have any kind of answer for until much later in my life.
I’ve realized there’s some psychological connection between my memory of this event and my exploring the river to make photographs of the trees, reaching into the water with their arms/roots. It makes me think of my mother’s arms holding that pillowcase underwater. It’s shocking how events from our early lives shape who we become and guide our pursuits in later life.