Interview: Julia C. Martin - Between That Earth and That Sky, I Felt Whole
So for readers who are meeting you for the first time, can you tell them a little bit about your practice and how you began working with photography?
I began photography in high school, in the darkroom. My high school was one of the few high schools in the state that still had a darkroom. I just fell in love with the process of an image showing up from the developer, it's just so magical. So, I did film photography exclusively for a long time and then just decided I wanted to pursue it.
I'm really interested in the themes of mortality and femininity and fragility. I would say that those are the three main themes in this particular project, Between the Earth and the Sky, I Felt Whole. There's a few other themes that came up as well but those are kind of the ones that are consistent throughout my art practice. Thinking about mortality in my own life has definitely projected my art practice forward.
How would you say that your exploration of mortality has changed over the course of your studio practice?
I've just kind of been able to become clearer on my own thoughts of it and work through how I feel about certain things, especially dealing with mortality. My art practice is kind of like this meditation or healing.
Do you think about your work in the context of art therapy?
Yeah, definitely. I think that's one of the main reasons that I was so drawn to photography in the first place. It just kind of allowed a release for myself or some sort of way of expressing what I was dealing with. I think just being able to have some sort of way to express that really helped me to work through it.
You're pretty skillful with material exploration so I assume that you're probably able to work with different media. That being said, do you think that photography speaks to you in a particular kind of way?
There's just something so raw about it. It's just, like, being able to see the world through my own eyes, without having to actually try to make my hand make something - which I can't do at all. I feel like there's just something in the way that I see the world that I can get across through photography that I'm just not able to with my own skill set in other mediums.
So I think you've probably already answered some of this already. But, generally, how has your relationship with photography specifically changed over time?
I think over time, I've been able to build on bigger concepts and understand how to communicate them. I think when I first started, I was kind of more literal in how I thought about things. I was just showing exactly what I was thinking but I've been able to figure out how to be more metaphorical in my practice and get things across without saying them exactly.
Who or what are some of your influences be it visual or otherwise?
There are two photographers who made me become a photographer after seeing their work. One is Francesca Woodman, which is pretty obvious, and the other is Jerry Uelsmann. It's just the way that they were able to express certain things through their imagery -- I hadn't realized that was really possible before I saw their work. It was because of seeing the work that I pursued this career.
More recently, Sally Mann has been a big influence as well as Jungjin Lee and her landscape work. I've always loved Vincent Van Gogh, too. Every time I see his work in person, I start to tear up because it's just so visually beautiful and has so much emotion attached to it.
For readers who aren't able to see your MFA thesis exhibition in person, can you describe the overall narrative of the show?
The show was all photographed in one area at the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southern Arizona. It's a really interesting place that has six of the rarest ecologies in the southwest in this one small area. It's a transition zone between the Sonoran Desert and the Chihuahuan Desert.
The one ecology that I'm focusing on in this place is the desert grasslands and it was actually an accident that I stumbled across this place. I was doing this work previously where I had been photographing different areas of the land and exploring my body's relationship to the land. But, it wasn't about place. So I was just like finding places all over the country basically and I was looking for another place and got lost. Going there, I stumbled across Las Cienegas and I had to get out of the car and photograph. It was just so beautiful and I didn't even realize, like at the time, the impact that the place had on me.
It just kind of kept calling me back. So, I kept going and I think the reason I was drawn to it so much is because the grasses were this kind of perfect metaphor for these concepts of time and the way that I view time as being cyclical. And then, also, like the cycles of life and death and rebirth, I could just see it all so clearly in this place. There's something so poetic and beautiful about it.
How do you determine when a particular place has potential for photographic exploration?
I think every place has potential for photographic exploration, it's just if it speaks to you. I think for me, the reason I was drawn to this place is I just was seeing these metaphors in the land. I think like being able to understand how this place kind of works off of that is a big thing.
How would you describe the act of photographing yourself in that space?
When I first got to grad school, everyone kept saying that my self portraits were so performative, which I did not agree with at all. I was like, no, it's just me going out and photographing. But I think for me, like when I photograph myself, it's just me being expressive about how I'm feeling towards the camera and me trying to find a way to capture that. And I feel like the reason I haven't used models in this work and in other work, is just because it feels so deeply personal. And it feels like it needs to be me expressing that but it doesn't ever feel voyeuristic or anything like that to me. It just feels like, you know, this relationship between me and the camera and the land.
The camera is the facilitator to have the experience between me and the land. It's almost like writing poetry or something.
Every time I go to photograph, I take my journal and I just stream-of-consciousness write for, like, anywhere from half an hour to an hour, you know, whatever. A lot of times it's my thoughts on the concepts of time and mortality and my relationship with the land.
If you had to determine one common point of misunderstanding about your work, what would it be and how would you provide guidance?
The self portraits being like performance rather than just an experience, because it's just a way of expressing how I feel about the place. I'm doing it for myself more than for anyone else. I feel like the thought of it being performance kind of makes it seem like it's more for someone else. And I think that's something that I've, like, grown through my photography with. It's like finding that balance between the internal and external.
What are some of the challenges and triumphs that you encountered throughout making this work?
There's always technical challenges for sure. There's certain things that I had in mind that just went wrong. A lot of times it kind of ends up working out in a way you didn't expect it to, like the grass piece that's hanging in the exhibition. It was initially meant to be this really pristine grass paper that I could print images onto. I wanted it to be kind of like Japanese kozo paper and it did not work out that way at all. But then, I was like, well, this is really beautiful in a different way.
It's probably one of my favorite pieces in the show because it has this ephemeral quality and is so tactile. So, I feel like you always have to figure out how to make something work. If it doesn't work the way that you planned, sometimes it can make the work better for it.
What specific role does materiality play in the exhibition and in your practice at large? Process wise, how do you approach materials - are you attracted to the material first and then match it to the concept or do you determine the idea first and then you choose the material?
Materials are really important in my practice now. I think maybe the reason that I'm so interested in it now is because my startings were in the darkroom and it's such a tactile experience.
I've always been interested in making things by hand. Once I kind of got into the digital realm, I was still shooting with film and developing film but then scanning and printing it digitally. But, I still wanted to have that handmade process or handmade print. So, I started thinking about other ways that I could incorporate that into the work. I think doing that really opened up the work a lot more than before.
When I'm thinking about what material to use, maybe I am kind of attracted to a material first, but I think the work has to come first and then it will kind of tell me what material it wants to be. I feel like if I have the material first, it's just kind of forced. I think it's a very intuitive process.
How would you describe the materials that are in your show?
I think movement is a big thing, I really wanted the silk pieces in particular to have some movement -- kind of like the way that grass moves in the wind. I wanted to have a similar experience and that's why I did those really large grass images on those pieces. But then also have it be kind of an immersive experience. With the silks, you're walking through them and kind of feeling like you're in the place and totally consumed by it. In terms of the grass paper piece, I think tactility is a big thing for that -- having this physical piece of the land that I made into this grass paper and then putting a physical piece of myself in it by sewing it together with strands of my hair. It's definitely very concept driven, but you can also see the tactile nature of it and the ephemerality and fragility of it.
Do you think about the longevity of your work at all?
I do and I don't know, for something like that, the grass paper piece, where it's so ephemeral it almost makes more sense for it to disintegrate just because I don't want to preserve it in a way that it wouldn't be preserved in nature. I want it to be a part of the natural cycle, so it's going to have a life, but then it's also going to have a death. But then, you know, once that matter is distributed, it will have a new life.
Can you talk a little bit about the element of chance and process artifacts and how those two things function in your work?
That is probably one of the biggest things in my art practice -- accidents happening and then turning into something else. Like in a previous project, I had this thing where I was shooting film and the film pulled off the reel and I had to open up my camera when I didn't have a dark bag. There were light leaks and it turned into this whole new project which inspired what I began working on my first year of grad school.
But, I feel like almost everything in my practice always starts by me working on something else and an accident happening and then me learning to grow from that.
Mistakes are going to happen and you just have to learn how to go with them instead of being frustrated with them and try to make it work how you originally intended.
Do you think that your work is in conversation with Pictorialism? Do you think that it subverts any of that movement’s conventions and history?
I would say that a lot of my work is definitely in that realm of Pictorialism, and that's something I've thought about a lot the past few years -- like, trying to figure out whether I can be a contemporary artist who's working in Pictorialism and Romanticism.
I've kind of come to the conclusion that while I'm thinking of similar themes and doing similar technical things, like having soft focus images and things like that, there are definitely things that I'm doing that do make the work contemporary.
There's kind of an ambiguity to my work that is a lot more contemporary. Romanticism and Pictorialism were based on metaphor but it was, like, very literal metaphors. I also have these more contemporary design aesthetics -- using strange materials, doing things outside of the boundaries of normal photography, and thinking about the work in the cyclical form instead of a sequential form. It kind of bridges that gap between Pictorialism, Romanticism, and contemporary art. So, I feel like I can still be making that kind of kind of work but still be a contemporary artist.
Do you feel like your position as a woman affects the way that you think about those histories?
Absolutely. A lot of early landscape photography is so much about the male conquering the landscape -- it wasn't in conversation with the land. That's something that I really wanted to break away from. I wanted to understand my position in the land. It's something that will affect me instead of me affecting it. It’s something that I have this relationship with instead of me trying to take it over.
But then also, there's definitely certain past female artists who I definitely see myself being very inspired by, like Julia Margaret Cameron and then later Francesca Woodman and Ana Mendieta. I feel like there's definitely this different mindset. As a female photographer, especially in this kind of work, where it's more about me telling the viewer what I feel. It's me feeling what I'm feeling and then letting the viewer experience what they want to feel. Maybe that’s similar to how I'm feeling, but I don't know.
I feel like there's also this kind of connection that women have with the land that men don't that has to do with having the ability to like give birth and create new life, but then also like having menstrual cycles and bleeding into the earth. I think women tend to think about time as being more cyclical because of menstrual cycles and men tend to think of time being more sequential.
Can you talk a little bit about the tension or relationship between being a living being and framing your image within notions of mortality?
When I think about that, you know, in our culture, we tend to see death as this end but a lot of other cultures don't. I don't see it that way either. I see it as a step in the cycles. So, I don't really see going from living to an end in death. I just see it as matter becoming something new. When I think about the way that my body might decompose into the soil, assuming that I'm going to have a natural burial and not be processed in the way that our culture deals with death - when my body decomposes into the soil it will become nutrients for a new life and new life will come out of my matter. So, I don't really see it as life versus death. I just see it as like this continuation of the cycles.
Do you hope that your show provides a new perspective on death, perhaps specifically for American culture?
I do. And I mean, that's something that's always really interested me. Like, in a previous project, I was photographing dead animals and thinking of the way that our culture sees death. I wanted to show it as this gentle passing, but also not an end, but a new beginning.
What piece or pieces are you most excited about exhibiting in the show?
I'm very happy with the grass paper piece. It's not something that I ever would have thought of myself doing. I've always seen myself as just a photographic artist. I never thought that I would have the skill set to do something else.
Also, Becoming the Land with the burial performance and then the burial image on the silk on the ground. I think it's something that I wasn't necessarily anticipating, but that excites me in a different way. I think that the tactility of that piece, and the way that the silk crumples and creates that texture and having a life sized body on the ground is something that's really interesting to me right now.
What do you think is next?
I feel like I have quite a bit of momentum. I feel like there's a lot more work to do in this place and this is maybe like one chapter of that work that's ended but I feel like there’s more to come. I've been thinking about doing more with the physical grass and then maybe incorporating video.
How can readers get in touch with you and see more of your work?
https://www.instagram.com/juliacmartin/
People can definitely contact me personally, I’m always happy to hear from people.