©Molly Lamb, untitled 02, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

From the first moment I discovered Molly Lamb’s work, I knew she was a true artist narrating her world with poetic, nuanced, and deeply felt photographs. I then got to know Molly when we met at Review Santa Fe some years ago and we began building a friendship and crossing paths over the years. What has been a constant is that she brings intelligence, fragility, and beauty to her storytelling, creating photographs that are infused with memory and a bit of mystery. Molly recently opened an exhibition, Home and Away, at the Rick Wester Fine Art in New York that runs through November 19, 2016. The exhibition encompasses a trilogy of family narratives including the series, Ghost Stepping, Let it Go, and Take Care of Your Sister.

Molly holds an MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a BA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work has been exhibited nationally, most recently at Rick Wester Fine Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Danforth Art Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Center for Fine Art Photography. In 2015, she was named one of Photo District News’ 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch as well as one of LensCulture’s 50 Emerging Talents. She was also awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, was a Critical Mass finalist, and was a finalist for the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s Clarence John Laughlin Award. Her work has been featured in Photograph, Musée Magazine, Oxford American, Harper’s Magazine, and Photo District News, among others. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art, New York.

©Molly Lamb, untitled 04, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

For the last several years, I have been making work about my family history and how it permeates my being, my experiences, and my perspectives. This work has evolved into three series of images coupled with poems. Each series is a separate chapter in a longer, ongoing narrative about loss, family history, and family future.

Ghost Stepping is the first chapter of this longer narrative. It revolves around the ephemera inherited from my family and the emotional terrain of living with their belongings. The second chapter, Let It Go, is about the resonance of loss and trauma. The ephemera recede into the background. Take Care of Your Sister is the third chapter. It was inspired by visiting the Mississippi Delta where my father grew up and is a meditation on the history harbored within the land.

©Molly Lamb, untitled 05, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Take Care of Your Sister

My first recollection of inheriting the belongings of someone in my family is when I was five years old. Consistently, throughout the years since, I have inherited the belongings of most of my family. This history permeates my experiences and perspectives, and it also now ends with my life. When I pass away, all that I hold dear – my stories, my belongings, and those of my family – will dissolve into a world that does not speak the language of our nuances.

Take Care of Your Sister is a meditation on the emotional resonance of loss, family history, and family future through the land – a landscape that is grounded in reality yet also distorted through time and displacement. It is the third chapter in a longer, ongoing narrative and was inspired by visiting the Mississippi Delta where my father grew up and where my brother and I spent time with our grandparents when we were very young. When my father was a child there, he was asked to take care of his younger sister. When I was a child, the last words my father said to my brother were, “Take care of your sister.”

Without a family home to return to, the landscape becomes the place that harbors history and memory. The land engulfs and it provides respite. It haunts nightmares and it eases them away. I now live far away from the landscapes that make sense to me and give substance to my past, but I look for them here anyway. And I always return to them.

©Molly Lamb, untitled 06, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Take Care of Your Sister
Part One

Moths circling and circling

uneasy yellow light

suspended

in speckled black

below the stars

and cicada silence.

Strong wind on the bridge –

dirt in the air, in my hair,

in the shades of darkness

where the light laps against

the water’s whirling

solid,

where they caught

moths

when they were young.

That is not cotton.

He is not him.

Fields

rows

divides

dirt

cracks

where there is no rain.

Thick summer

clings to my skin

quietly urging

its way into my bones.

Ghosts in my eye

under the shroud cry

leave me here no more.

©Molly Lamb, untitled 07, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Take Care of Your Sister
Part Two

For days,

I saw only solitary

birds.

Now they flock

and fly and

flood the sky –

inverse constellations

mapping

my insides.

Three hundred pictures of

branched wings pulse

unbound

and cloak the dogwood tree.

Red in the berries

in the bellies

in the leaves

in the gap before

winter’s edge

takes storm.

I return and

return

and return again

to the tree,

bare and empty,

waiting

for another spring.

©Molly Lamb, untitled 09, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 10, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 12, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 15, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 16, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 22, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 23, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 24, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 25, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

©Molly Lamb, untitled 27, from Take Care of Your Sister, courtesy of Rick Wester Fine Art, New York