Interview: Kathleen Robbins on her project ‘Ginkgo’ an exploration of the messiness of profound loss, motherhood, grief, landscape and family.
Your work tends to have an awareness of space, and a quiet stillness that remains consistent in all your bodies of work. How do you feel this plays into your body of work Ginkgo?
With Ginkgo the photographs are a stopgap. The physical landscape and emotional landscape are tethered in all my work, but especially with Ginkgo. I’m thinking about transience and fragility. Our life lost sound when we went from three to two, and I guess it makes sense that the sensory shift in our reality entered the work. There is sorrow and melancholy but also, yes quiet. As I photographed following the death of my husband, I knew these weren’t like my previous photographs. They were much more driven by feeling. I had to do a lot of thinking about how photography could function to explore these ideas without being overly sentimental or apologetic. I wanted the photographs as a sequence to reflect the messiness of sudden and profound loss, and as a result these photographs are more nebulous. Time is collapsed rather than layered. It is an exploration of presence and absence, existence and non-existence, loss and continuity, and the depicted space both in terms of light and depth functions to hold those dualities.
Each image has a notion of place, exploration, and even memory. Have you found this approach to be helpful in healing?
Ruminating on place and memory is a common grief response. It has been healing for me to talk to other widows, and I still find it interesting how often we refer to time in conversation with one another, often addressing the days, months, years in grief and how odd it is to be tethered to loss in relation to time. I refer often to a memoir titled The Curve of Time by Muriel Blanchet who was widowed in 1927. Following her husband’s death, she spent summers traveling the waters of British Columbia in a small boat with her 5 children. She described a sensation of seeing herself outside of time: Standing in the present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the past, or forward and see the future, all in the same instant. Or, if you stand off to one side of the curve, as I am doing, your eye wanders from one to the other without any distinction. My great-grandmother lost her husband at the age of 32 around the same time as Muriel Blanchet, and she was also left to raise five children. My late grandmother was a painter widowed in 1985. I often consider my loss in relation to theirs, particularly my grandmother. I rediscovered her Polaroids, made on our family’s farm while she was mourning my grandfather, and they became a point of connection with my photographs made 35 years later. Finding my experience, which felt so isolating, reflected back in the experience of others, particularly women in my family who I admire, opened a door towards healing. Similarly, the highest compliment for me is when someone familiar with loss says they connect with the work. That others might see themselves or their own experience in the work is healing.
How does mental health or wellness factor in this current body of work?
Elizabeth Alexander described trying to rationalize things after the death of her husband and landed on “poetic logic is my logic.” I have always tried to make sense of the world, to process things, through photographs, and having an outlet for creative expression became an important tool for my mental health. I was desperate to make us whole again and to find restorative rituals. The whole body of work depicts images where we attempt to re-fix ourselves in place and time. Somehow, we slept soundly in a tent after having not slept for months in our beds at home. It felt safe to be out in the wilderness together with my son, where home was fraught with memories and loss.
How has your son reacted to this work? Do you see him as a collaborator in this work?
I don’t want to speak for him, but I see him as an active participant. He was 9 when his dad died, and he’s a teenager now. The unwritten rule is that if he doesn't like a piece, I don’t use it. Interestingly, he has changed his mind about some pieces over time because he appreciates that they have a significant relationship to other images. Making the work and certainly outdoor adventure has been an important point of connection for us during the past 5 years. One of the driving forces of this work is me wanting him to know how loved he is. I think he is able to pretty easily separate our actual life from this work that is a theatrical manifestation of a snippet of our life. There are also images and experiences that I will always keep as just ours. Incidentally, the etymology of my son’s name is the verb, ashar, which means “to go right on.” Ben chose his name and endeared me to it after reading its meaning aloud. Sometimes I think Ben somehow knew on some level that he wouldn’t be with us for long, and he chose our son’s name as a reminder.
Do you have any one image from this series that you feel best sums up this work? Any stories to share on how the work might take place?
The image of Asher’s last baby tooth was made during the early days of COVID. I pulled the round table that belonged to Ben’s grandfather out of the attic, as a smaller alternative to our larger dining table. It fit us better. The round table became the center of our world during that time. We ate there and did homework, puzzles. On the afternoon I made that photograph I stumbled upon this scene. Asher was familiar with pulling teeth at that point and could do it on his own. He got his own gauze to stop the bleeding and followed it with a glass of milk. The remnants were on the table, and it struck me in the moment as an example of how parenthood is full of little moments of grief.
Was the process of creating this project helpful for dealing with the emotion we can feel within the statement and work?
I recognize what a privilege it was to have that time with my son primarily but also to have the creative output expectation while on sabbatical. Following a map and a plan together to places that elicit feelings of awe and wonder helped to unburden both of us of overwhelming sorrow. I feel fortunate to have had photography and my son and the time and space to travel, to run away to an extent, and to try to make sense of the world and our place in it.
What are some things of influence currently in your practice?
Books that have given me the most solace are memoirs by Joan Didion, Muriel Blanchett, and Elizabeth Alexander. I’m currently reading Carol Mavor’s Black and Blue. I’m interested in any expression of grief that is presented without a note or air of apology. A few weeks ago, I saw Awoiska van der Molen’s The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, and I was moved by it’s simplicity and Molen’s exquisitely beautiful prints. I loved Sirah Foighel Brutmann & Eitan Efrat’s Là, which I was fortunate to see at SMAK in Belgium during the same trip. I was struck by the idea of archival projections being used to create an imaginary dialogue as a way to grieve. It was a beautiful and multifaceted show. Adrianna Ault’s Levee and Richard McCabe’s Perdido are recent favorites as well.
Where can we find your work?
You can find my work on my website kathleenrobbins.studio or on Instagram @kathleen.robbins.studio.
Thank you Kathleen for sharing your work!