Landscape Stories: Where can the roots of your work be found? When did you begin your career in photography and why? Could you describe your earliest experiences with photography, both as a viewer and an artist?
Frances F. Denny: In my early twenties I decided to pursue photography from as many angles as I could. I had taken classes in high school and in college, but it wasn't until after school that I realized that photography is the medium with which I could best communicate my ideas. So I took more classes, worked in a darkroom, took freelance gigs, and assisted other photographers for five years before finally going to graduate school to earn my MFA at Rhode Island School of Design.
I think the first book of photographs that hit me hard–this would have been in high school–was Sally Mann's "Immediate Family"–and also her book "At Twelve". I remember being gobsmacked by those images. Mann's work made me realize that photography could transcend its subject matter and become allegorical, emotional, even political.
Landscape Stories: Which artist influenced the most your beginnings? Who are your favorite artists and why? Which photographer has inspired you most?
Frances F. Denny: As I mentioned, Sally Mann was the first photographer whose work made me understand the power of photography, but Francesca Woodman was a big influence early on as well. Woodman's personal story and body of work took on an almost mythic quality for me. Seeing a young woman picture herself in the ways she did opened a door in my brain. It was powerful to see a young woman turn her camera on herself¬, defining how to express herself on her own terms. Her voice was so strong! It spoke to me rather directly at the time–I was a young woman trying to sort out who I was, what my relationship to my body was, and how I felt about the people in my life. More recently, portraitists like Rineke Djikstra and Deanna Lawson have been sources of inspiration to me. I'm keenly interested in the nuances of portrait photography, and both Djikstra and Lawson possess an uncanny ability to both reveal their subjects and also speak through them.
Landscape Stories: You have some ideas you'd like to realize. How do you develop your projects? What is your methodological approach and intent?
Frances F. Denny: I usually begin with research, especially for my last several bodies of work. "Let Virtue Be Your Guide" was quite personal and required looking into my family's ancestral history in New England. My latest series/book, "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America", was more anthropological––I had to research an entire cultural tradition that I knew very little about. Building relationships with my subjects is also key to my process of developing a project.
Landscape Stories: During last years I loved so much your "Let Virtue Be Your Guide". Landscape Stories published this project on issue 18 FAMILY (2014). From the editorial: "Family is the mirror of social changes, slow but deep. Remaining on only some of the most recent developments we can underline: the revolution of the middle-class family, the new role of women, the splitting between public and private, the evolution of new relationships, the individualism of contemporary society. Protection, education, socialization. The warm nucleus of our affections wraps us up in something in which we can keep quiet. At the same time, it is the space of quarrel, suffocating. Bearer of uneasiness, inequalities and contradictions". "Let Virtue Be Your Guide" documents the female members of your New England family. Is there something special that inspires you and drives you to create a certain feeling? How does the project evolve since the beginning? How do you choose the people you photograph? How do you choose the locations you represent in your pictures? What draws you towards the choice of one location rather than another?
Frances F. Denny: "Let Virtue Be Your Guide" was quite a personal project–I'm not sure I would undertake something so directly about myself and my family again. "Virtue" can be difficult to write about in a direct way. The series is about my New England family, and the particular version of femininity embodied by some of my female family members–proper, buttoned-up, as well as the domestic spaces they occupy. The images include portraits, found still lives, and interiors/exteriors of homes. But there are also places and individuals that appear as surrogates, or stand-ins, for ideas, so it's not necessarily a straightforward documentary project. The series poses a kind of personal reckoning; a struggle to acknowledge my own privilege no matter how much distance from it I'm trying to construct; an attempt to put my finger on a familial–and perhaps cultural–legacy of how a woman "ought" to be.
Landscape Stories: Referring to your book "Let Virtue Be Your Guide"... It is being published by Radius Books in 2015. How did your collaboration with Radius Books start? Could you tell us something more about the creation of the book? Do you mind explaining for our readers why you chose to make this book, and what you hope to accomplish with it?
Frances F. Denny: A visiting critic at RISD introduced me to David Chickey, the founder of Radius Books. After I graduated, I got in touch with David and pitched him "Virtue" as a book. To my excitement, he offered to publish it. Working with David was a dream–he is a brilliant designer and a truly lovely person. I was lucky enough to go on press with him for the printing of my book in Verona, Italy, which was such a treat and a crash-course in printing.
The book itself is one of the things I am most proud of. Four years after it came out, I can say I wouldn't change a single thing about it. It feels like an art object in its own right. For that series in particular, book form is the best way for the work to be viewed–in the reader's hands, in their own personal space. There are some lovely design surprises, as well as the most evocative Afterword by writer and novelist Lisa Locascio.
Landscape Stories: How would you describe your photographic voice/language and way of working/creative process? How did your vision refine with time? Do you have a method of working which you follow for each series, or does it vary for each different project?
Frances F. Denny: My method and style morphs from project to project. My sense is that the scope and feel of the project should define how the pictures are taken, and at this point in my practice, I'm able to adjust how I shoot to speak to the needs of an individual series. For example, "Virtue" was shot entirely on film with a Hasselblad, whereas "Major Arcana" was shot with a DSLR. "Major Arcana" was less intimate and required more nimbleness for all the travel the project entailed, whereas with Virtue, was photographing people I knew, in places pretty nearby and familiar. I photographed around seventy-five people for "Major Arcana"–that would have bankrupted me to shoot with film!
Landscape Stories: "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America" is your last publication by Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2020. How much importance do you attach to the emotional approach of this particular group of counterculture characters? What do you find extraordinary in the stories of these women? Why did you decide to document this particular aspect of contemporary America?
Frances F. Denny: The initial spark of inspiration for "Major Arcana" actually came when I was researching my family's history in New England. I discovered that not only was my 10th great-grandfather a judge in the infamous Salem witch trials, but that my 8th great-grandmother was accused of witchcraft in another Massachusetts town several decades prior. That coincidence stuck with me long after "Virtue" was published. In 2016 I was reading a historical account of the Salem witch trials and was reminded of my ancestral connection to them. I began thinking about the figure of the witch as a kind of proto-feminist archetype that has evolved significantly over time. I also had a sense that there are people nowadays who have reclaimed the identity of "witch" for themselves. I wondered to myself, "Who are they? What do they believe in, and how do they practice witchcraft?" I spent the next 3 years researching and meeting with individuals around the U.S. who self-identify as witches to answer those core questions….and "Major Arcana" was born.
Landscape Stories: Referring to your "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America". How much does the final image come from you or from the person you're photographing? Do you think that it is important to interact and communicate verbally with your photographic subjects before shooting? How does a photographer gain the trust of his/her subjects in this kind of situations? Could you explain us how do you find the right balance, the necessary empathy, between you and the subject?
Frances F. Denny: My process for these portraits was as collaborative as possible. My subjects usually chose the location of their shoot, as well as what they'd wear, with the intent that those choices would reveal something about their identities as witches. I also conducted informal interviews with them, texts from which appear alongside many of the portraits in the book of the series. It was important to me to give my subjects as much agency as possible in how they were represented, especially since they were being portrayed within my specific framework (i.e., as "witches in America"). I was straightforward with them about who I am and what my intentions for the project were–I wrote a letter that I shared with each of them explaining my own ancestral connection to the history of the word "witch," and I never pretended that I was also someone who saw themselves as a witch herself despite having a great deal of respect and affinity for witchcraft. Most of the people I ended up photographing came through referrals of others I'd already photographed, which speaks to the level of trust I was able to build within the community.
Landscape Stories: Which books you feel close or influential in relation to your "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America?"
Frances F. Denny: The three books that proved most essential to my research process for "Major Arcana" were: "The Witches" by Stacy Schiff, "Drawing Down the Moon" by Margot Adler, and "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk. None of them are photo books.
Landscape Stories: What's your plans for the near future? Do you have other books planned?
Frances F. Denny: My book "Major Arcana: Portraits of Witches in America" came out a few months ago, so I've been promoting that as well as my first solo museum exhibition, which is at The Southeast Museum of Photography. As to what's next, I have plans for some studio-based still life images, and I'm also knee-deep in a writing project.
If you'd like to follow my work, the best way is to follow me on Instagram @francesfdenny. You can also sign up for my infrequent newsletter on my website, www.francesfdenny.com under the Contact tab.
Many thanks!
francesfdenny
instagram
the museum show
Interview curated by Gianpaolo Arena