PhotoNOLA: Jennifer McClure

PhotoNOLA: Jennifer McClure by Aline SmithsonJanuary 7, 2013

For the next few weeks, I will be sharing work that seen at PhotoNOLA….

It’s not easy turning the camera inward, and even harder turning the camera on our physical selves. It was a complete pleasure to spend time with Jennifer McClure’s emotional and symbolic work at PhotoNOLA–photographs based on the exploration of self, but also offering a way of narrating one’s life and experiences through color, gesture, and place. Living in New York City, Jennifer uses the camera to ask and answer questions. Most importantly, she wants to know why anyone ever gets out of bed in the morning. Jennifer turned the camera on herself after a long illness limited her access to other people. She is interested in appearances and absences, short stories, poetry, and daydreaming.

Image from You Who Never Arrived

Jennifer was born in Virginia and raised all over the Southeast. The child of a Marine, she moved frequently and traumatically. Photographs were the proof that she lived in this place, was friends with those people. She decorated her walls with traces of her past. Pictures became anchor points. After acquiring a B.A. in English Theory and Literature, Jennifer began a long career in restaurants. She returned to photography in 2001, taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography. She is currently a teaching assistant at ICP.

Images from Music from a Farther Room

Music From a Farther Room

I love the water but I am afraid of it. Water constantly changes and has the power to soothe, sustain, or destroy. I love people but I am afraid of them for the same reasons. Involving other people in my life means embracing the unknown, and I tend to see only the dangerous aspects of the unfamiliar. The guiding principle of my life so far has been one of self-preservation and control.

We moved frequently when I was a child, so I have no hometown or sense of place. I have not done anything to create that for myself. I watch my friends get married and have children and wonder why I never felt that pull. This project is about my search for what is important in my own life. I have more questions than answers, and I am sometimes exhausted by the effort. I am afraid that I am getting lost in the questions, that I am holding myself back from an uncertain future that is probably not as frightening as I imagine it to be.

“And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of the fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”

Joseph Campbell Pathways to Bliss