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by Yvette M Pennacchia
I had the opportunity to interview the photographer Linda Cummings in her Manhattan studio. She had the frames of ’ÄúThe Approach’Äù blown up and mounted on a wall. After the interview, Linda stated that she wished she could get my perception of her work, so I suggested that we reverse roles and that she interview me. In the following narrative you will find first my interview of Linda, the artist, and then her questions of me, the audience.
YMP - Your new body of work, ’Äú24 Frames,’Äù deals with motion and being transported. How does speed play into the work?
Linda Cummings - When I take a photograph there are three elements that I’Äôm aware of wanting to include: one is time, one is space, and the other has to do with the experience of the viewer, which would be what I consider to be perception. Speed is obviously connected to motion, which is connected to time, which has to do with a sense of my body traveling through space. ’Äú24 Frames’Äù has to do with the speed in which we travel. The world is moving faster; there is a way in which, at a certain velocity, time eats space. It is an inversion and I’Äôm very interested in that place, where space and time converge.
Speed is something I play with because it allows me to break out of the conventions of still photography. I don’Äôt think anyone sees in single images. The history of art is about the single iconic image, but it always has been layered with metaphors, as, for example, in Renaissance or religious paintings. The iconography conveys a sense of time.
A photograph has to address time in a very different way, because you can’Äôt layer
a photograph the way you would a painting. Painting is an additive process,
whereas photography is a subtractive process: you pull something out
of space, or you pull it out of time. You really have to think about
using devices that accentuate the image by slowing down or speeding
up normal sense of space and time. I try to exaggerate the fundamental
forces at play within the frame.
YMP - In your artist statement you mention that you are now slipping and sliding through the images since you and your subject are in motion. In your previous work, you toss a woman’Äôs slip into the air and photograph its movements, which you refer to as hysterical gestures, and you remain the observer. What prompted the change?
LC - I think it has to do with the notion of where one locates oneself in the world. Do you locate yourself in external objects or do you locate yourself within your own body? My earlier work was very literal; it was constructed that way. What the slip stood for was a trope for the feminine, or the absence of the body, and so it could always be read on that level. But the more I photographed these hysterical gestures in steel mills or stadiums; spaces which were in polar opposition to the slip I realized how the work became more theatrical’Äîthe wind, the sun, and gravity’Äîthese were all actors in panoramic spectacles that I was creating, wanted to become more of the actor.I came upon this idea of becoming the slip. I did not want to inhabit the slip. I did not want my body to be in the slip in a ’ÄòShermanistic’Äô way, wearing the slip or the Maiden form bra in different public venues. I wanted to maintain the idea of the invisible body that is constantly in flux, constantly in motion, and constantly inventing itself. So it was important to me to find another way of representing that body in space without the actual armature of social convention like a uniform, like a slip, like a hat, like an apron. I wanted to explore beyond that recognized static form, I began to lose my balance in space the way the slip looses its balance as it is tossed in the air. I now inhabit the hysterical gesture’ÄîI become the hysterical gesture. I wish to create the perception of being alive in an embodied form in different kinds of bodies that are barreling through space.
YMP - How does the dream state play on the viewer’Äôs perception of your work?
LC - Conscious needs are no longer present when we’Äôre sleeping, so it frees our energy to be aware of other levels of consciousness that I believe are always there. The mind plays itself out in our dreams’Äîwherever they come from, whatever they mean’Äîso the body is being transported through time in our sleep and it allows for certain physiological experiences to happen. We are so busy most of the time tending to very important tasks of survival that we can’Äôt pay attention to these psychological needs unless we’Äôre sleeping or zoned out on the highway. I think it is very similar to being a passenger on a train, on a bus, in a car, or in a cradle as a little baby. We do not have to use our physical energy to actually move ourselves through space and time.
This state of suspension, the dream-like state of mind is very fascinating to me. I also think being in a state of conscious suspension while a passenger has political implications. Passiveness or powerlessness can be both productive in a dream state, or nonproductive during waking life, allowing you to become disengaged from the actual physical energy it takes to propel your body and take responsibility for your life.
YMP - Looking at some of your work reminds me of becoming car sick as a child. Vast movement, motion, and not enough time to process what I am observing. And yet, I feel my mind takes in the images quicker than my eyes, seen on a subconscious level. Is this one of the objectives of the work?
LC - I want to bypass the sensor, yes. When you get sick there is a lot of stimulation going on physically, but I want to create a certain mental dizziness or a mental overload as well. Since the movement doesn’Äôt stop, you yourself have to stop because everything is moving so quickly; so in a sense I’Äôm trying to slow the viewer down. A lot of my work is about trying to slow people down so they can look at what they’Äôre seeing and see what they’Äôre looking at.
YMP - You are shooting from the hip, literally, and yet your subject is often unaware of being photographed. How does this contradiction affect your final image?
LC - In that moment, I want to be less aware of exactly what the camera is seeing. I’Äôm relating to a more physiological impulse to shoot, knowing what I believe is in the scope of the viewfinder, but I don’Äôt want to be optically anchored to a particular viewpoint or vantage point or focal length or shutter speed or exposure that is predetermined.One of the things about photography is that there is so much that is controlled and fixed. I try to disrupt that by shooting from the hip and by shooting more spontaneously, trying to bypass my own framework. When I develop a roll of film, I love being surprised. I want to be surprised. I don’Äôt want to know what is on that roll, so in a sense there is a way in which I’Äôm trying to address a certain state of consciousness through the veneer of randomness, which leads me to the unconscious.
YMP - So do you know intuitively when to press the shutter?
LC - It has to do with visual cues because, again, I am constructing a picture from a visual language and so there are certain fundamental issues like line and shape and tonality and texture that are to pictures what characters, verbs and nouns are to language. I’Äôm looking for the cue that will allow me to synthesize the moment visually. It’Äôs like humming. You’Äôre walking down a road you’Äôve never been on before, and all of a sudden you realize you are humming. You don’Äôt know why you started humming and where that song came from, and maybe you’Äôre even making it up as you go along. But it has something to do with the experience of being in that place.
YMP - Although I don’Äôt know you personally, you exude a calmness of presence, a ground-ed’Äîself. But your work speaks of dreaming, free association, and unexpected access to other space and time. How do you reconcile the difference? Is there something you wish you could get away from or move toward?
LC - ’Äú24 Frames’Äù is a journey that I’Äôm taking to move away from the static image, which I see as so limiting. Technology keeps inventing all these new ways of revealing the world. Now we have pixels, and we have optical instruments that can go into our bloodstream and radio back photographs to the doctors. There is a way in which the detective in me loves the scientific aspects of photography: the very controlled aspects, the very technological and innovative aspects of photography. But the more poetic part of me hates that part of photography; hates that controlled, single frame, single point of view, and fixed image in time.
I would really like to have that battle go on in my work’Äîpart of me wants the pleasure of just living, experiencing nature, life, and relationships. Yet the other part of me is very much driven, participating in a cultural conversation, very alive, very frantic, and very intense. I need both and try to deal with both.
YMP - You stated earlier that much of your work has to do with having the viewer slow down. Why is this theme so important to you?
LC - I was brought up to be a worker-bee in large family. There was really very little time for reflection about tomorrow. There is a rush to do’Äîa cultural expectation. I need my work to put on the brakes, to slow down, to allow more time for very important questions to be entertained: Where are we going? How are we getting there? Why are we getting there? Those are just some of the questions that the image of transportation may evoke for some people. I would like my work to allow people to pause and reflect and live inside of questions, rather than rush to seek answers to questions that someone else told them were important but may not be relevant to their lives. Perception of one’Äôs experience’Äîof being alive in this sensual world and responsive to it’Äîis one of the goals of my work.
YMP - Does how you present this body of work to the public reflect how you want us to understand it?
LC - I think a lot about framing, and I mean that in the biggest sense of the word’Äîframing, framework, context, display’Äî because the frame becomes another element within this grammar, this syntax for the visual. So a frame is like the end of the chapter or how you construct a poem. This is one reason why this new work is taking on the character that it is; the image builds sequentially, rather than everything being embedded in one single image.
YMP - What has been the greatest surprise from this body of work?
LC - I don’Äôt know about the greatest surprise’Ķperhaps it is the connection between unconscious experience and conscious action, because I feel like I really live inside my photographs a lot more than I used to. They are so much closer to an environment that feels connected to my inner expe-rience.The other surprise is the way I work backwards. I’Äôve become more aware of time. Although I take the frames sequentially, 1-24, I think about them often in reverse. My thinking process works more through association than it does logically. So I can be out shooting, like I was the other day on the Staten Island Ferry looking back at Manhattan from the surface of the river and looking at what’Äôs missing. As we get closer to September 11, this new group of images has a whole lot to do with the missing buildings and looking back, seeing in reverse, remembering, our recognition catching up to our perceptions.
This series that we’Äôre looking at right here, called ’ÄúThe Approach,’Äù is related to approaching the footpath from under the Hudson River coming out to the Path Train. The question is, what is miss-ing’Äîwhich is very connected to my earlier work with the slip and the missing body. It used to be an individual body that was missing and now it is these collective bodies that are missing.
Other questions’Äîmuch larger questions about liberty and justice’Äîare missing too, as we rush toward a certain kind of attitude toward the rest of the world and even in our own culture. So there is this sadness about what is missing. It surprises me that no matter what I shoot and no matter how I shoot it, I keep coming up with these same questions, which have to do with the fluidity of time and self - the interconnections between past, present and future ’Äì and the’Ķinterface between a poetic and political self. How do we make room for that in the world, what constitutes the self, and how is the self experienced in space and time and in relation to other bodies? In my work I hope to achieve a’Ķreal emphasis on inter-elatedness; nothing exists in and of itself. We’Äôre all connected, and I get to express that more and more in this new body of work.
(The interview is now reversed)
LC - How do you approach my photographs as the viewer?
YMP - Being someone who is extremely organized, initially I can’Äôt see anything in the three frames of ’ÄúThe Approach.’Äù It’Äôs too busy. The images are frustrating because they aren’Äôt easy to grasp, and yet once I begin to look, it’Äôs like hunting for treasures. Looking for something familiar because everything looks so unfamiliar. I love the fact that, after a while of staring at them, something that wasn’Äôt recognizable at first becomes clear. For example in frame #21, I’Äôm looking at a horizontal line of light caused by movement, and then what catches my eye is recognizing the subway. All of a sudden, my eyes go to the extreme bottom right, and I see a widow in frame #22. The buildings are very distinct because the images are less blurred than those in the rest of the frames. In frame #20 I see the ceiling. It reminds me of someone’Äôs spine with protruding bones, and I like that.
LC - So there is this oscillation you refer to between the inside and the outside of your body, which is something that I’Äôm striving for in my work. It is very important to me that you, the viewer, feel that you can enter into the work, that all the motion does not repel you. And yet there has to be a tension between seduction and repulsion so that there is energy. I do want slight puzzlement, which might be discomforting but not solely, and hopefully the images will transport you to a place of recognition.
YMP - The tension between repulsion and invitation can been seen by looking at frame #20. My eyes move from frame #20, which is busy, to frame #22 that is visibly clearer. I see what I couldn’Äôt see before. In frame #21the invitation comes from the light crossing horizontally which remind me of the Grand Canyon’Äì it becomes seductive because it is familiar.
LC - Frame #21’Äîa metaphor for my own dream state, lying on the edge of the vortex’Äî addresses the issue of danger, which is so much a part of our experience and so much a part of what we try to deny or protect ourselves from in the struggle to find something to believe in that is unchanging, that is sure, that is safe. I like edges. I like the way edges are both dangerous and reassuring.
YMP - The way the light plays in your work reminds me of being a kid and making animal shadows by cupping my hands. In frame #20 I see a golf club that could also look like a snake, and in #21’Äîit reminds me of a German shepherd reindeer. I didn’Äôt see any of these images five minutes ago.
LC - In the library of our brain are images just waiting to be called upon again. This is the place where dreams come from. Dreams happen when our eyes are closed, when there is an absence of image. We create images from absence.
YMP - Now that I’Äôve seen these two images: German shepherd/reindeer, which doesn’Äôt exist, but snakes and German shepherds’Äîwhich I’Äôm equally terrified of’Äîthey are not receding (both burst out laughing); in fact, they are the only things I can focus on, and I’Äôve already lost the Grand Canyon.
LC - So the element of danger has really come into the foreground.
YMP - The more I look at your work, it is a very active process for me and my eyes are getting tired. It reminds of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
LC - Yes, EMDR is based on hypnosis when your eyes are traveling back and forth really quickly as you recount a traumatic experience, and the hope is that as you reroute your eyeball pattern physiologically, you will reroute the traumatic event and how it was engraved on your brain. In the five images looking out from the ferry [frames 5-9 below], there is a sense of calmness, to give the eyes the opportunity to rest.YMP - ’Äú24 Frames’Äù requires work to be appreciated.
LC - I am requesting the viewer to expend effort so that I can design a more complete experience. Now look at the images below. Let yourself free-associate and allow yourself to really be transported, both bodily and mind/consciousness. If this results in you being more in touch with your own perceptual powers’Äîconcentration and lack of it’Äîit would be wonderful.
’ÄúIM/MIGRATION’Äù 22in X 72in Digital Photograph, 2004 Top image: "APPROACH" 22in X 72in Digital Photograph, 2003
This interview took place on the occasion of Linda Cummings' solo exhibition at the dm contemporary art gallery in the summer of 2004.
Linda Cummings may be contacted at her studio: 212.388.1274
Yvette M Pennacchia - writer, art and public relations consultant, and founder of Lotus Promotions can be contacted at: www.lotuspromotions.com
