From Our Archives: Sara Vanderbeek
Sara VanDerBeek. Civil Dusk, 2014.
This interview was originally featured in Issue No. 13 — Women.
MUSÉE: The Guggenheim exhibit, Photo-Poetics: An Anthology, was organized by Photography Senior Curator, Jennifer Blessing, and predominantly showcases the creative vision of female photographers. What does it mean to you to be displayed among other females utilizing the same medium and exploring similar themes?
SARA VANDERBEEK: I am honored to be included amongst this group of artists. I respect their practices greatly.
Sara VanDerBeek. Ancient Solstice, 2014.
MUSÉE: Guggenheim’s press release for Photo-Poetics marks images in this anthology as having a “poetic and evocative personal significance – a sort of displaced self-portraiture.” Do you feel this description is accurate of your work exhibited? How does your work function as a facet of “displaced self-portraiture”?
SARA: I think the act of charting history via a hand-made mobile construction in a work like From the Means of Reproduction does in some ways become a form of self-portraiture, but I did not think that at the time of its creation. It is not my intention to create self-portraits via still lifes, but I feel like in trying to grasp an understanding of this moment it can at times become a reflection of a sense of myself within this moment. Less so with Crepuscule. The simple primary shapes and repeating semicircular form that rises and recedes within the images is meant to be more about the moon, perception, and temporality larger more shared concerns that expand outside of the personal.
Sara VanDerBeek. Synthetic Geometry, 2014.
MUSÉE: How do you feel your body of work presented in this exhibit echoes the show’s title?
SARA: I have created a new multi-part work titled Crepuscule, which is directly inspired by a poem by E.E. Cummings of the same name. The images are subtly layered at two different depths within the frame mirroring the staggering of the words of the poem on the page.
MUSÉE: What is the dialogue between your work and poetry?
SARA: I admire the acute observation employed in most poetry I have read. I am qualifying this because I have not read a great deal of poetry but I have read certain poets such as Walt Whitman and E.E Cummings in depth. With the simple forms and compositions as well as the sequencing of my images along the wall, I try to emulate the focus rigor and compelling structures of modern writers such as Cummings, or to bring it to the present with references to contemporary writers such as Anne Carson.
Sara VanDerBeek. The Visible Universe, 2014.
MUSÉE: You once said, “We all recognize that the present is imbued with the past.” How does your personal past make its imprints on your present work? How does the collective past of society and culture – inspiration garnered from raw, found material – make a mark on your work?
SARA: I think we are in a fragmented and challenging time yet it is also a very significant and compelling moment because we seem to be in the midst of a great transition and we are witnessing in real time a movement from one way of living and working to another. Most every generation can say that but I think the merging of technology into almost every aspect of our lives seems particularly significant to me. This sense of movement and this shift in our consciousness is something I am interested in exploring within my current work.
I enjoy that with the ever presence of technology and the collective expanding and elastic archive of the Internet, certain ways of learning or communication have changed – breaking down disruptive hierarchies. Figures lost on the fringes are remerging to create a more complex understanding of our history. It also seems that there are more platforms for engagement and expression via the Internet and other outlets like Instagram and Snapchat and for that matter smartphones that make it a dynamic time. We are both progressing towards some new form of communication via quick, often disposable, images, which seems like a radical break from the past yet, in other ways, feels like a return to an ancient state of symbols, signs, and pictographs.
Sara VanDerBeek. Synthetic Geometry, 2014.
To view the full interview, visit Issue No. 13 — Women.
