Featured Contributor: Bootsy Holler
Having gained a reputation for communicating the intangible, Bootsy Holler’s fine art photography transcends time and space, leaving the viewer with a profound perception of the given subject.
In capturing and evoking all the depth of emotion the human spirit holds in a single photograph, Bootsy begs the question on her own website, who has time for a thousand words?
In her project Visitor: rebuilding the family album, Bootsy bravely reinterprets old family snapshots. By superimposing herself into photographs with family members of generations past, she is able to play with the concepts of blurred boundaries, place, memories gone by and time travel. In reimagining these frozen moments and placing herself amongst many family members who are no longer around today, Bootsy experienced a kind of voluntary catharsis, reconciling a great portion of her own identity by understanding where her mother and grandmother came from.
By embedding herself into these photos and subsequently choosing different wigs, outfits and ages, Bootsy remains an elusive member of her own family. Looking on in some photos, participating in others. Throughout the series, however, she is never far behind her loved ones. In toying with time-travel and re-touching history, Bootsy successfully coalesced a more rooted sense of family that she had previously felt robbed of. Of this notion, Bootsy writes, “…each [photograph] is an artifact that lets me connect with the family that fell apart. When I reflect on my ‘visits’ with my relatives, I once again feel part of a family history and legacy that is unbroken.”
I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Bootsy in regards to the current success of Visitor, what the future has in store for the project and the artistic process that helped bring it to fruition.
Can you discuss your artistic process and how this photo series may have challenged, derailed it completely or simply differed slightly from that of past projects?
B: All my personal work starts organically. Often that means I have a bug in my head that sits until it finds a way out into a project. With the Visitor series, that was a need to use all my vintage clothes. The project really came into focus when I was asked to do a self-portrait. After sharing this image with people - the one of me standing with my grandmother Ruby and my dog Mouse - and seeing the reaction from people, I knew I had something special to work on. I’ve never had a reaction to my work like this. I really got true reactions, like gasps and ‘oh my gosh!’
The process, Bootsy elucidated, went something like this: “I collected family photographs and I looked for snap shots that had a place where I could fit in. I decided what to wear and collected the outfit, the wig and decided on makeup. Then once everything was ready, I would figure out the lighting in the image and how to match it. This last part became restrictive, like, ‘I’ve got to do that shot at high noon out in the alley or on the sidewalk in my neighborhood.’”
In sharing intimate details about the photo series, Bootsy noted that the only time she felt slightly removed from the process itself was in those brief moments of posing for a camera timer dressed in vintage clothing inherited by her grandmother, standing outside in an alley or on a sidewalk to get the perfect shot.
Bootsy explained that the challenge in Visitor came about when creating the space necessary to superimpose herself in an organic fashion. “I’m obviously a very meticulous person,” she said. “So naturally, finding the right image was vital to the composition of the piece.
How long did you spend on this project?
B: I think I worked for nine months to a year. My son was a year old when I took a class and that’s where I was asked for a self-portrait. I took the class for inspiration. The class met monthly so my goal was to be able to bring in two or three or even one new image a month.
Did your vision shift at all from start to finish with Visitor?
B: I think most of what changed is when I start a project, it’s subconscious for me. It comes with no heavy emotions behind it. Then I start to write about the work and I have to say, “What does this all mean?” And as time goes on, I think about how my interpretation of the work changes. It’s the process of me understanding myself better - a self-realization of who I am and why I’m here. My identity and everything I’ve learned from my mother about her and my grandmother changes my thought process about who they were and how I came to be. It has brought up a whole new relationship with my mom and me. A better relationship where we are working together on something that she is the expert in; her life. The project has changed me as a person; I like myself better.
Did you have to sift through a large pile of old family photographs that were already in your possession? Were these simply the first twenty photographs you came across? If not, why these particular twenty?
B: While working on the photo series Ruby & Willie, I took a bunch of photos that were in a box and my grandmother Ruby’s yearbook. That’s really all that was left.
In the midst of the project, Bootsy revealed, her Grandfather had passed away. What had been so carefully preserved by him since his wife’s death in 1978, was either torn apart or sold.
B: The rest of the photographs might have gotten taken to the dump, I’m not sure what happened to them. The box is literally extras and small 2 ¼ contacts. I saw them as snapshots, as artifacts. That was kind of huge for me, keeping them the original size. That box was all I had; I didn’t have a lot to choose from. A whole other wave of images emerged from my mother’s side as well that I can use up, but the first twenty came from the found box. I have possibly thirty usable images from my dad’s side that I want to start working with. Sadly, most all of his side of the family photos got lost.
Bootsy mentioned that she would like to progressively transition into utilizing the color album archives her family kept, thus sparking a further extension of the project.
B: I’m going to move into some color so when I do the book I’ll have at least sixty pages. This way it won’t only be a family timeline that’s depicted but a photography and fashion timeline as well. I want the book to be like a little diary of family snapshots, stories, photography, hair styles and clothing going across in this compressed time lapse, starting in the early 1900′s to the 1970′s.
While there are brief descriptions underneath the photos, were there stories that had been shared with you at some point in time regarding those family outings and memories? Or was there a lot of room for interpretation as you superimposed yourself into these images?
B: My mom had stories for some photos but not all. Almost everybody in the snapshot I’m connected to through family. I know most of the people, or have known them at one point in my life, so I do have feelings about each image and person in the photos.
When I first was putting Visitor out into the world, I entered a single image into a juried show and I thought, “Oh shit. If it’s just a single image with no text how will anybody get what’s going on without a heavy statement?” That one image made it into the group show and had a small paragraph under it about the feelings I had of sitting with my grandfather while he was fishing.
Some of the photos talk about the locations versus the people. So I don’t know. I think it was just a photo album idea to have that hand written text along with the work. The images are framed in a black shadow box with my hand writing on each in white ink. I’m also trying not to overwhelm whoever is looking at it. I want it to feel like a family photo - an artifact from the past - which is why they are printed, trimmed and sized as the original looked and felt. Creases, scratches, damaged corners and grainy photography included.
I do think when I do the book it might be nice to interview my mother and father a little bit more and add more story. People seem to really need the text with the images, so many people don’t get the work. They think it is just a vintage photo or don’t understand that it is me in the snapshot, even when the image has text and an arrow pointing to me, people still have a hard time believing it. This work is very quiet, not in your face. You have to want to understand what is going on or you will just walk right by and assume it is just an old snapshot from someone’s family album.
On her site, Bootsy writes of her fine art project, Ruby & Willie: “I used photography for what it does best, to document a place and time before it is gone.” Perhaps Bootsy has found a way to circumvent the finality of the passage of time with Visitor. In reconceptualizing the frozen moments, Bootsy has brilliantly traveled back in time, revisiting and sharing in the experiences and environments that once were.
To view more of Visitor and other works by Bootsy Holler, visit her site.