I have always been a writer. My mother was a writer, and she would read to me as early as I can remember. Starting when I was in elementary school, she wrote books inspired by and dedicated to me. I was her proof-reader, her sounding board, and her champion. I was also “shy” when I was younger – but really, I was so much more confident in my ability to write words more than I could ever speak them. Words have always been with me, and they will never leave me.
I’ve also had a passion for photography. After studying the muckrakers and the documentary photographers of the 30s and 40s, I was inspired to pursue a career in documentary photography and photojournalism. This dream led me to research the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. This led me to pursue a degree in photography, though no longer focusing in photojournalism. I was already incorporating letterpress, book arts, and mixed media into my practice, and that would continue after I graduated in 2017.
My degree was in photography. My tag line was queer bay area photographer. My URL is still micaenglandphotography.com, but I also have micaengland.com – and plan to change to it in the near future.
So what’s changed?
My mother. My mother’s illness. My mother’s death.
Since her 2016 diagnosis, I had diligently photographed her “cancer journey.” My senior portfolio was her. Many of the photos I took afterward were of her. But as her body began to change, bloating and balding and bruised… there was nothing to empower or uplift. I had no desire to preserve something that would only further depress me and insult her. So I didn’t. And as I set the camera down, I lifted it for little else. And what was once my primary medium would soon become a stranger. And in the midst of her steep decline, I had turned to writing.
August 2019 was “the beginning of the end” for my mother. It was then that I started writing my mother is dying; my mother is dead, inspired by my initial photography series I had developed for my senior year portfolio. This writing project spanned my mother’s last months, as well as the first year after her passing. Like photography had once been for me, it was my constant companion, allowing me to compartmentalize my thoughts and cope with my grief. Grief is its own medium and message. And for a while (perhaps even still), grief was my primary medium.
So what’s changed?
COVID
I was laid off with the onset of COVID. I then found myself in lockdown, suddenly with all of this time to develop my own work… but I struggled to find a direction. Photography felt foreign, but writing is raw and direct. Perhaps my old and reliable friend could help me again?
Before COVID, writing was only a part of my practice and used in harmony with my photography, supplementing my visuals and overall concept with text. But what am I doing now? What’s changed?
Now I’m embracing writing as art practice, and fully embracing myself as an “artist-writer.”
My experiences at AAU and as a photographer have shaped, and will always shape, my process. And because of it, I see writing through that lens: an artist’s lens. I am an artist-writer; I am not just a writer. I don’t foresee myself in the near future, or perhaps even ever, separating myself from visual arts. The writing will inform the medium, and the medium will accentuate the meaning of the text.
So what’s changed?
With most of my work, I’ve had a set concept in mind. I’ve written the outline. I’ve written the words I want to act as the primary message. I’ve developed a shotlist or some specific process for the imagery. But as the years have progressed, and as I’ve created during COVID, I’ve strayed from that formula and method. Now there are works in my portfolio that are just prose. Now there are installations of found and old works. And now there are so many photos in my archives that were shot for an intended purpose, but have since been abandoned – contextless and homeless. While I still identified as a photographer, I labeled this endeavor a failure, and thought of myself as a failed photographer. This “failed photographer” label then became my Instagram bio during much of the pandemic.
From 2018-2019, I had stitched together some of the shots from my disposable cameras – the only photography I took to during the last stages of my mother’s illness. Looking back, the shots are beautiful enough on their own, but they’re incomplete. Looking back, they’re a first draft. Normally, I would archive a first draft because it’s naturally lesser than a complete work. But as I’ve grown, and as I’ve shed myself of the “photographer” label, I’ve realized the process is important. The process informs and can become the message. And the process, the medium, and the message can exist in symbiosis.
I’ve spent many months stewing on how best to recontextualize my numerous abandoned photos. And while I’ve been inspired to write many new collections, the photos have remained untouched. But now they may find new purpose as I take inspiration from dreams and dreamscapes. The proposed dreams can make the process. The dreams can make the medium. And the dreams can make the message. What can emerge will emerge, and whatever emerges… emerges. It’s a radical new direction for me to just let it happen. It’s unfamiliar creating without a set system in mind, but incredibly freeing.
My mind has certainly needed freeing.
Prior to this year, I was still applying a photographer’s lens to the last four years, and coming away with the conclusion of “failure.” I had countless abandoned photographs, sitting unused on my drives; no new photo bodies of work uploaded to my website or Instagram; and no recent photo-related exhibitions or publications. But as I updated my website and added “artist-writer” to my heading, I found that I could upload my other works. And in doing so, I saw that I had created work all those years. In fact, I had always been creating from an artist-writer’s perspective, not a photographer’s. I had struggled with this personal rebranding for a while, fearing what it would mean to abandon the medium that I had gone to school for, as well as other practical issues like updating SEO and redesigning collateral. But there is no shame in that experience informing my writing practice. My unused photos are not “failures” – they are photos I can pull from at any time as I continue to pull from my writing. I no longer need to feel the shame in their original projects not coming to be.
Shedding the photographer label has freed me from the burden of having to create solely as a photographer, and the guilt and shame of not living up to imposed expectations because of it. I don’t need to carry that burden – I never did and I never have to again.
My practice is allowed to change. I’m allowed to change. Art and its creation are fluid, just as our identities are.
So what’s changed?
In some ways, nothing. And in others, everything.