Thoughts & Feelings Photographs
It was 1976 and I had been keeping a journal and xeroxing my letters to the woman whom I was in the middle of an affair with. It was a time of great turmoil. I was making changes in my life and voicing it all in writing. Having begun graduate school in photography I decided to pair excerpts from my writings with photographs to get in touch with who I was. I would then see some visual evidence that would stay with me.
Selecting a sentence or two from a declaration of a feeling or thought in my journal, it would be juxtaposed against a color image, often in counterpoint. The photo often was not a direct description of what was written, and I rather liked that. I might even make me laugh at the result.
Printing the color photographs in the darkroom, my excerpts were written on typing paper with a black magic marker. The enlarger light exposed the negative through the typing paper and onto color paper. The result was that every color photograph was diffused by the texture of the typing paper. The writing appeared white at the bottom of the image area. And the image was less sharp and more impressionistic, if you will.
I made lots of color images that explored every thought and feeling that I was having, as I wanted to see it all. My thoughts and feelings were now out there, and Joyce was no longer hiding. The end result was a hand-made book that I presented.
While sharing prints with others, people responded that they had had similar thoughts. One particular thought about stabbing myself with a knife to make me come alive stood out, as people responded that they had the same thought, too. It was only a thought, however, as I never wanted to hurt myself. I look back on this work and realize that my photographs revealed the pain of hiding for many years. I was becoming a woman who was now getting hold of herself.
