A friend told me recently that all artists have only one thing to say, and they work their whole lives finding ways to express that single thing again and again in different ways. Music and photography are the two most important ways I hear those declarations, be it whispers in wind or shouting into the canyons. Both forms employ composition, timing, texture, and movement to interpret life and frame it for us. Both music and photography use and give perspective. Both art forms remember. Both art forms order and arrange. They both do what might be the single most important deed that can be attempted: They tell us stories.
If my friend was right, then art is a voice, and I’ve always felt the best voices explain the nature and condition of our communities and of ourselves, to help us better learn, remember, and celebrate what there is worth remembering in and of our own time and of times we can not have witnessed. For future audiences who cannot now know us, they may look back and they may listen to what we cherish, struggle with, and what we love. We sing along to songs because we sometimes can’t find the truth and the feelings any other way. We look at photographs for the same reasons.
Two of the best artists I know in these respective forms are my wife, Claire, and my good friend Jesse Elliott. Claire works with apertures and shutters, Jesse with a pen and six strings. But really, they do the same things. Both have in their pockets the rare qualities that are needed to pursue the tremendous tasks they have set out to accomplish; they see the world and they understand it for us. They are the keepers, the makers, and tellers of our stories. They make us feel – and equally – they make us understand. They make us remember. They and their kind are the ones you want around your campfires; for they each in their own ways observe, think, and all at once can take in time and space and give it back in sights and sounds that are the rarest form of stories – the ones that are at once both fact – and also truth: somehow more beautiful, eloquent, and simpler than the mess and complexity we find ourselves often in. We three have had back porch nights full of citronella and sour mash, cupcakes with critiques. It seemed right for me to try to find a way meet their work on the dusty path where they cross. Street lights all look the same in every city, but in each I’ve been in with Claire and Jesse, I know they will shine somehow brighter in their stories.
I wanted to find some small way to share a little of Claire’s intentions, her motivations, and show where she is coming from, so that those she meets through her photography can better know who is behind her camera. As a photographer, it is her job to observe and to render the experiences as she encounters them. This short film is the first attempt to turn her into the subject instead of the author.
I started with the basics – the personal spaces she occupies and the motivations that compelled her to photograph. For her clients – current and future, this is meant to better acquaint them with the woman who they task on those days and among those people in their lives that are worth remembering and celebrating with photography. Connecting some of my understanding of her with Jesse’s music helps me get a little closer to headwaters of both photography and music, their confluence, and to better understand the immense purpose they serve. When this idea was shared with Jesse he knew what I meant, and was kind enough to select one of his songs found on his band’s recent self titled album, and perform a special version for this project. With many talented contributors, Jesse re-imagined and re-recorded his song for this story about Claire.