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Having grown up in the South, where a white winter was something only imagined, photographer LISA M. ROBINSON accepted a fellowship and found herself knee-deep in a new reality. This beautiful new book is the result.

INTERVIEW BY PATRICK AMSELLEM

FOR THE PAST FOUR WINTERS, Lisa Robinson has been photographing in the snow. She grew up in, and is comfortable in, the South. But the mental landscape that the spare, frozen white physical landscape suggests is one that has intrigued her enough to keep going back, even though she hates the cold. Patrick Amsellem interviewed the artist for photo-eye.

Patrick Amsellem:There are so many things that come to mind when I look at the images in Snowbound: the importance of the trace, the mystery of layers and, perhaps the strongest impression, the contrast of a kind of static, silent beauty with an underlying sense of forceful tension. Water is such a powerful element and even in its solid state of matter the potential of change is looming. What attracted you to these landscapes to begin with?
Lisa Robinson: One of the first images I made that struck a chord I had not heard before was Running Fence. I was driving down the back roads of Pennsylvania one winter afternoon when the surrounding flat fields of snow were suddenly pierced by a bright orange fence that disappeared into the horizon. Approaching the quiet scene, I was lured by the opening in the fence, mesmerized by the ever-so-slight separation of earth and sky. There were stories here, of human efforts to control and define, of suggested life beneath the snow, of the mysterious unknowns beyond the horizon. I had walked into a Japanese ink drawing splashed with color, and I just stood there in awe of its simple complexity. Here, on the side of a snowy highway in December, I experienced a connection between a waking and dreaming world, a place where time seemed suspended.
     The resulting image continued to work on me, and I asked myself why. I didn’t know the answer, but I sought understanding. Perhaps I was first drawn to the snow because it was so unfamiliar to me. I grew up in the South, so winter as a time of snow and cold was an imagined space that existed on classroom bulletin boards. Experiencing these landscapes for the first time, now as a photographer, was revelatory. That was the beginning. From there, I wanted to go deeper. I am less interested in documentation than in evocation. These spaces accessed an emotional and cerebral response in me that I wanted to understand.
     The tension you refer to is so important to me. I hate the cold. I much prefer a tropical climate. Yet something visual and conceptual compelled me into these icy landscapes. These were places I was not meant to be: walking on ice that creaks with flowing water below, trespassing onto private property, photographing in a heavy blizzard. I found that the physical challenge of photographing in these conditions was only quieted by the mind. The stillness of the image is areflection of that inner space I found. And yet, simultaneously, the wind whipped around me relentlessly and the cold still numbed my toes.
PA: You touch upon a feature of your work that I really appreciate: the subtle fusing of form and content. Your formal solutions are tight, elegant and beautiful, often with recurring shapes—circles, poles, ropes—that anchor the compositions. Now and again, as in Crush, you use the all-over to create dramatic, more abstract images. At the same time, as you allude to, the palimpsest quality of the pictures stretches much further than just the physical, tangible layers in the landscape so as to suggest almost meditative and even existential qualities. Could you talk more about this particular connection, this sense of evocation? And how do you arrive at your titles?
LR: I have always been drawn to work that functions on multiple levels. Literature has taught me much about the power of a concept to take form in a specific way while still being enormously open. Ultimately, it is a very human impulse that I am listening to, giving voice to, trying to comprehend. The landscapes I enter are, certainly, very real. But I believe that what I see in the landscape is a reflection of the thoughts in my head, the questions I am engaging. The tundra is my canvas, my blank page. Winter is an idea that I enter, as much as a landscape I explore. So many writings about winter touch upon the thought of the world at sleep, of dormant life. There is this underlying sense that Spring is synonymous with life and that Winter is the fallow period leading back to it. I believe in greater contradiction, greater ambiguity. All things are whole. I am seeking indications of this belief in the landscape. I enjoy the ways in which these images can comment on a very contemporary world at the same time that they resonate with deeper implications.
     The titles come from this same source, in some ways. Music and poetry possess the evocative powers I hope my images to convey. Oftentimes I will look at an image I have made and try to distill its essence for me, in my head. The very idea can then be articulated in a word or phrase that captures that spirit. It is as much an intellectual challenge as a poetic one, since I want to remain faithful to ideas that are often slippery, even changeable. Many of my titles embrace the ambiguity that defies simple categorization. They help me comprehend these images without closing them up.
PA: “It is a sparse and revealing white,” the poet Mark Strandwrites in the introduction to Snowbound. His two poems, “White” and “Snowfall,” create a beginning and an end to your book. Did Strand, former painter and United States poet laureate, write these pieces specifically for Snowbound? How did your collaboration come about?
LR: Several winters ago, I began reading haiku. I was drawn to the complexity of such a spare and limited form, especially those poems that referenced aspects of winter. These images share a kinship with poetry, using a visual language that is both specific and metaphorical. So when I read Mark Strand’s poem “A Piece of the Storm,” I was mesmerized. It is a poem about life and death and time and nature, manifested in the ephemeral and the eternal snowflake.
     I wrote him a letter, accompanied by some of my images, and asked if he would be willing to write an introduction for the book. I was stunned by his generous and sincere response; he simply called me the morning he received my letter and offered to write something. We had several more phone conversations before he asked me if I might consider using a poem that he had written years ago, a poem which he felt spoke to my work. He read me “White” on the phone. It was perfect. He sent me the poem in a collection, where I also discovered “Snowfall.” It felt like the natural conclusion, that quiet dark whisper of a close. It is a privilege to have someone with such insight and eloquence to offer his perspective to this work. The images are cradled in the palms of poetry.
PA: Indeed, poetry frames the photographs and articulates a certain mood, both emotional and existential. Word and image work together here, almost seamlessly. In your own introduction you talk about Snowbound as a journey, and in a previous conversation you have also hinted at the project in terms of a passage, a “heroic journey.” Even though the images don’t constitute a narrative as such, how do you think about this idea of a sequence or progression? For practical reasons, the book format also requires an order in which the images will be read. How did you make these decisions? And how was your collaboration with the publisher, Kehrer, structured?
LR: Mark Strand’s poem “White” describes the existential space that Snowbound explores. The process of making this work and understanding it has enabled me to confront the pain of loss and embrace it as a part of life. My introduction sets a tone for Snowbound, revealing the sense of this work as a journey. The sequencing of the images is intended to reflect this evolution as well—from initiation, to challenges, to enlightenment, to a return (yes, the heroic journey). I do not wish to bash people over the head with these ideas— they have developed exceedingly naturally, revealing themselves over time, formulating the structure and significance of the work to me as I have sought to understand it as a whole. My sequencing is an extension of this logic—it is not formal, or geographic, or typological, but conceptual.
     Once I understood the broader swath of this work, I could manifest it through the book form. The book is not merely a catalogue of images, but a coherent work itself. I have given great thought to its design and flow. The decision to print one image per spread as a full bleed is one that enables the viewer to enter into the expansive space of this work, and to discover his or her own connections. The beginning image is echoed in the final one. The evolution of the work has led back to this point, continuing the cycle, but there has been a change. I thought of Joyce’s Ulysses, and the return to Molly Bloom’s bed. The experience of the journey lies within the space of this day. There is ambiguity in time, in space, in place. And yet, all things are connected.
RW: But the dissatisfaction of others, particularly with the narrative limitations of photography, has led them to add sound or moving image sequences. You seem determined— and happy—to stay within the boundaries.

Snowbound. Photographs by Lisa M. Robinson. Introduction by Mark Strand. Designed by Lisa M. Robinson and Petra Wagner. Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, 2007. Trade edition of 1700. Limited edition of 75 printed by Cloverleaf Press, Austin. Photo-illustrated paper over boards. 112 pp., 50 color illustrations, 11¾ × 9¾  $60.00/$750.00

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