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| © Kate Greene, untitled, 2009 |
I was in my first year of graduate school when I made this image. I remember feeling so uncertain of my vision. My confidence was low and my anxiety was high - living in New Haven was strange and I felt myself detaching from the relationships that I had held closest. A friend at school handed me a copy of Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. This seemed like a guide that I needed.
I recall devouring that book and then trying in earnest to harness my emotional state and get lost in my work. I wanted the camera to somehow reveal something more than my own eyes could observe. I wanted to see the unseeable. This photograph was one of my first attempts at allowing that to happen.
This picture was made at a riverbed in western Massachusetts. I set up my view camera and composed the image just before twilight. I then stopped down my lens and left the shutter open as the daylight disappeared. It was a mystical experience for me to watch the river move as day turned into night and know that my camera had recorded this event on a single sheet of film. I had no idea if the exposure would come out or not. Lucky for me - it did.
- Kate Greene