Sometimes, I find myself contemplating recurring questions when I engage with the works of artists that I deeply resonate with. One of those thoughts surrounds the surface of a photograph, and the layers that emerge when one revisits it over time. I’m drawn to photographers whose imagery has hidden stories that may or may not reveal themselves; a thought that I ponder upon while soaking in the fragile frames of US-based artist, Sara Silks.
Sometimes, I find myself contemplating recurring questions when I engage with the works of artists that I deeply resonate with. One of those thoughts surrounds the surface of a photograph, and the layers that emerge when one revisits it over time. I’m drawn to photographers whose imagery has hidden stories that may or may not reveal themselves; a thought that I ponder upon while soaking in the fragile frames of US-based artist, Sara Silks.
Sometimes, I find myself contemplating recurring questions when I engage with the works of artists that I deeply resonate with. One of those thoughts surrounds the surface of a photograph, and the layers that emerge when one revisits it over time. I’m drawn to photographers whose imagery has hidden stories that may or may not reveal themselves; a thought that I ponder upon while soaking in the fragile frames of US-based artist, Sara Silks.
The artist explains this in the concept note for Kaizen, where she writes that it was the work of American photographer, Ralph Gibson that saved her life. He had once said, “An insider is somebody who photographs from the inside out, he's not an observer. He's a participant making it personal.” The thought stayed with her and shaped a large part of her practice. “It took reading those words from one of my idols to understand that I not only needed to photograph from the inside out, but perhaps more importantly, live from the inside out. If I could somehow simplify the cacophony of thoughts and ideas in my head, my work could improve,” she continues.
Having taught and experimented with wet plate collodion techniques, cyanotypes, Vandyke printing, and albumen prints, Sara is intrigued by the dimensions that can exist within a singular frame, and the surfaces of photographs. Since she engaged with her family archives collected by her grandparents from a young age and was transfixed by the deep silver surfaces that existed in old albumen prints, the top layers of photographs have played a deep role in her own artworks. “I remember looking at pictures of my grandfather's mother on a steamboat on the river in Missouri, and watching them shine a bit,” she says longingly. As I continue to uncover her process, Sara says she might be able to explain this more eloquently through a poem by Wallace Stevens. She recites:
Of the Surface of Things -
I
In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
The photographer explains that it is this passion for poetry, design, and materiality that weaves together in her final piece that she works on obsessively. Sara also believes that it is her experience in printmaking techniques that has positively impacted her photography – “Through printmaking, you learn how to loosen up, use layers, and repeat motifs within works. It is this thoughtfulness that has seeped into my photographic process too,” she elucidates.
In some of her imagery, nature and self seem interchangeable, as the sky takes on the form of the sea, and flowers float above delicate hands. It is the influence of her childhood summers around the Ozark lakes that have subconsciously shaped much of her visual language and the subjects that she focuses on. The way the moon draped itself amidst the rising mist of the night sky, the shifting-shadows that lingered on the ripples of the still water of the lake, and the abundance of deer in the countryside were engrained in her mind’s eye, and wander into her frames even now.
But it is Sara’s work titled Studies of Women, that I pause at specifically, since its subjectively quite different from her usual nature laden frames. The work is a historical reference point for her daughter who she believes she was distancing from- a realisation that struck the artist after her own mother’s passing. “Momma died unexpectedly, and we had been distant. I found a list by her bed of books, each with a note next to it… ‘good,’ ‘recommend,’ ‘return,’ ‘ok.’ The way I handled my grief and regret was to read those books, turning the pages to feel her presence, close in a way that had not been possible when she was here,” she writes.
The imagery is languid and almost mimics self-portraits, exploring periods of deep-rooted transition. I find it intriguing that it’s a personal story that feels rather universal in its treatment, whether addressing mother-daughter relationships, or one’s own transition through womanhood. It is this strength of traversing through a multitude of worlds that Sara showcases - some imagined, others realistic, but almost always questioning what lies beyond and beneath the surface of things.