Photo Journal Monday: Annie Ling

Hand, 2021 © Annie Ling

Images and Text by Annie Ling

Fever Dream

A body possessed, a sweating recliner. A storm hangs on the horizon, and a hiding place to tempt escape. The air breathes hot and cold. The image, unstable.

Flame, 2021 © Annie Ling

This lyrical series grew from frequent walks around my block in New Haven, Connecticut, and the edge of town at Indian Well State Park on Quinnipiac, Paugussett, and Wappinger territories. Last fall, I was commissioned to respond to a penetrating poem on loss by Kamilah Aisha Moon, written during the height of the pandemic. The profound resonance of her piece “Storm” is fueled by the terrible consequences that have marked the year, spoke to a restlessness that conjured in me a sleepwalker in search of relief from a confusing reality resembling a fever dream. The feature titled America 2020, in Vision and Verse paired photographers with contemporary poets, resulting in intimate conversations across the images and the texts. Metabolizing the visceral nature of the poem and allowing impulses and improvisation to guide the process intensified the personal stakes involved with image-making. Sitting with the discomfort reveals hidden pathways that lead to possible new ways of seeing and being.

Tracks, 2021 © Annie Ling

These images surprise me in the forms they have taken—installed in a discreet interstitial space, as an immersive flickering slideshow, a card deck inspired by the memory game, or inhabiting locally salvaged frames positioned around a monument. In their most recent reincarnation, the images turned objects live in custom containers that glow and highlight the walls behind them, reimagining the recurring themes of body, color, and movement in my current practice. These gestures reveal resilience and refuse a certain fate. The images shapeshift— they survive.

Well, 2021 © Annie Ling