Two Pods

Vanessa R thompson

Interview by L. Valena

Let’s start from the top. First, tell me what you responded to.

Well, I’ve been obsessed with ice in general in my photography for a while, so I really like the thaw and de-thaw of relationships, friendships, loss and grief concepts that were through it. What grabbed my attention were these two distinct characters, who maybe aren’t the best for each other, but still have lofty dreams together. It was out of tragedy in this story, but you sort of grow apart, grow together. But that loss of someone is still behind you. So, that’s where my idea percolated from. Then it became the two pods in the ice, and one’s coming out, the other isn’t.

Cool, let’s take a step back. You had this story, and some of these themes were coming up as you were reading it. Can you back up and say what happened next?

Yeah, so I entered the story wondering what visualization was popping into my head, and the ice was really where my imagination was captured. I thought it could be something like a glove being stuck in ice, kind of sticking out, but that felt too obvious and on-the-nose. So my brain was like, What other allusions can you get of being stuck in the ice, and there’s so much more to the meaning of lost friendship. You know, they’re forever gone but you’re not knowing where that person is. So they’re kind of frozen in time as well. Another concept that stuck out is that the person is just lost and frozen in that person’s memory in the last time they saw them.

I love that. Is ice something that you work with in general?

Yeah, I like embedding things in things. Ice has been something that I’ve been playing with this year particularly. I played with it 20 years ago and it’s come back, as a lot of stuff does in your art practice. You start to revisit old ideas, and the idea of ice is coming back to me from the visual standpoint of the cracking and the distortion it causes. It’s just so beautiful. And also that frozen time. I’m doing a lot of stuff that deals with nostalgia and lost memories and various things that I’ve found in thrift stores that no longer have the people that they’re associated with. The idea that this is a frozen-in-time moment and then alluding to it literally with ice.

What are these, anyway? It says “Two Pods”, but what are they?

They are two dried flowers. The center part of two sunflowers, actually, with the petals all gone.

That’s awesome! Sunflowers are so amazing.

They’re beautiful! And we had a bunch. Someone gave me a bunch of flowers, and I froze them and put them in the ice. The way the leaves would kind of deteriorate slightly is really beautiful. They’re just gorgeous.

They are gorgeous. I hear that your photography is strictly analog, not digital. Can you say more about that?

Definitely. I started out as an analog photographer, and then probably a decade ago, I switched over to digital, and quite frankly did not like it. I think it’s a completely valid medium. I compare it to oil and acrylics. It’s just a different medium. So about four years ago, I started pulling out my analog cameras. And about two years ago, I got 100% analog. It’s something about the film. I didn’t like the instant gratification of digital. I appreciate all the happy mistakes that you find a couple days later after the process. I also like the way my old cameras work. I shoot with a Pentax 6x7 and it is this beautiful, enlarged camera. When you take a picture, it sounds like CLA-CLUNK. It’s so loud and gorgeous. It’s the happiest sound in the world! I guess, next to babies and dogs. Actually, dogs first, then babies. [laughs] So it’s like the most amazing thing. I really just appreciate my old cameras and the feel and the way they photograph. But also it forced me to slow down and be a little more careful. I think I found myself getting a little lazy with digital, as well, just for the way I shoot. When I shoot, I shoot a lot. When I do a setup, I will shoot two or three rolls easily for each section. With digital, I felt like I was getting a little lazy in my shooting. So I went back to film to revisit that. And also, what I’ve shown you is color, but I do black and white. And that feeling of when the black-and-white comes up in developing is just magic.

And then recently, you lost access to your darkroom.

Yeah, in the middle of pandemic, we moved out of the city to the suburbs, which is a bit of adjustment as well. I lost access to my darkroom just because of commuting. I wasn’t able to get there. So I’m in the process of trying to build one, which is a little tricky. Lots of skills that I don’t have, which I’m learning to figure out. And getting some help as well. So I basically have piles and piles of negatives right now that I’m having someone process for me, that I desperately need to print. It’s a bit of a mess right now. I really miss having that darkroom time. I’m super excited to have my own darkroom for myself, but it’s going to be a little while before I get one. So the reason I’m in between darkrooms right now is the move. We were able to consolidate; I now have my studio in my house instead of a couple miles away. And eventually, I will have a dark room where I’ll be able to just hide and print constantly.

What is the process like? You just were talking about that magic moment of seeing a black-and-white image emerge in the liquid. How is it different to have something processed by someone else?

It’s different. I would have to say a little bit of a control freak comes out. There are very few printers I trust and it loses some of its magic. They’re very, very good. They do an amazing job and it’s awesome seeing the prints come back, but this is about having your own touch. Every little error, every extra bubble is something that you did in a way that makes it a little more unique. I’m not a fan of perfection. I like my errors in there.

What a great way of saying that! Plants, particularly fruits and vegetables, seem to be a common motif in art. Why do you think they’re so universal?

I think they are universal because they’re such an easy shorthand for life and death. I feel like that is largely why they’re there. They’re a poetic way to show the whole life cycle. And they also have such different meanings. Each flower means something different, depending on what mythology you look at. I imagine that’s a large part of it as well. Also, they’re something you see every day and it’s always nice to have different ways of looking at them. We usually see a beautiful flower, but if we look at it a little bit differently, we can really appreciate all of its organic nature. The idiosyncrasies, the oddness of each flower is what I really like as well.

And thinking about that prompt, the idiosyncrasies of individual people. It is kind of amazing to think about them in the same scale. We often think about flowers and things as these really nice metaphors, but it is interesting to really think deeply about the same scale, like you and I are different people just as these two flowers are different from each other.

Exactly! It could be the same family, the same tree, but they’re so different! Each leaf has its own little personality, its own little issues. If something’s wrong with one leaf, it can spread to everything. And some are beautiful and dangerous, and some are completely benign and, you know, exactly what you need. [laughs] We we’re going a little deep on that one, but…

That’s where we like to go. How was this experience for you? Had you ever worked from a prompt before? Tell me about how this felt.

It felt really good. I hadn’t officially done prompts before, but I love it. I love that concept. The way I do my process is I don’t usually have a full picture when I come to the studio. I have a kernel of an idea. And then I let the pieces speak to me. So I will work through a scene. I may decide to put stuff in Jell-o, with all that deep meaning. It’s there as a kernel, but as I’m shooting, everything comes more clearly. This was a very fun seed planted. It was a really nice prompt to be like, Here’s where your brain is going. But not adhering to anything, you know? I didn’t write something out before I went. I just froze some stuff, figured it out, shot around to see what worked, and waited to see what the film looked like before I really solidified the idea. Prompts are also great if you’re stuck in something and it gets everything going. Then you do that one shoot and, all of a sudden, you’re like, Ooh, I like the way that looks, but what if I did it this way? And what about this idea? And let me dig deeper into the idea of someone frozen in time, and the metaphor of that as well. So it’s a great launching point, and you just dive into the deep end and find so much more information.

What have I not asked you about? Is there any aspect of this that we didn’t talk about that you want to dig into some more?

No, but I think this is a really great way of getting creatives together. I’m a big fan of mixing media. When I went to school, in my grad program, everyone was in the room critiquing each other and working off each other. And I’ve never really been in a program where it’s just photographers talking about just photography, and I find there’s so much more creativity if you were to reach out and work with other mediums. So much influence, so much beauty can come from that. You know, a lot of my photography is heavily influenced by painters, and not necessarily by photographers. I like to go in a darker scale. I like things that are a little more painterly than straight-up photography.

I love the concept, especially playing with writers and comparing the two, because it’s always fun. What they come up with, what you come up with, it’s just amazing. You can have a fraction of a story, and someone can pull something from a piece, whether it’s a print or something written or whatever, and the person might be like, I wrote that and that is not the direction I thought someone would take it! And I love that. I love when someone looks at my work and takes it somewhere that I had not thought of. That’s what I love about having different mediums at work, and that’s what I liked about reading this story as well. You add your own personal experience to stories and that always influences it.

We have writers, artists, musicians, dancers, fashion designers. We try to pull from every medium that we can think of. And a lot that we haven’t thought of yet.

I really like what you guys are doing. It’s a community, and I think we can often isolate ourselves, either in our medium or just in what we’re doing. We forget that there’s so much other stuff to pull creativity from. And give to, as well.

Call Number: C51PP | C54VA.thoTwo

Vanessa R Thompson never listened when her mother she told her to stop playing with her food. She grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut on a steady diet of 1980s horror films and feminism, seasoned with a dash of disordered eating and splash of punk. Now working out of Salem, MA, she uses items of consumable comfort; food, ephemera, and toys, in her analog photographs that range from abstractions to absurdities. Her work peels back their symbolism, leaving nerve endings exposed.