Jessica Hines
Photographers who can tell an effective story through their visual mastery are a talented breed. The thought and execution behind each image are small pieces of such a large puzzle that it seems much like writing a novel to me. It’s one thing to do this, it’s another thing to do it well. That’s where I had the thought that I should interview master storyteller, Jessica Hines. Now, mind you, this was not an easy thing for me to do. I say this not because Jessica is a difficult person or tough to get ahold of or anything like that, quite the opposite in fact. It’s because her most prolific body of work, My Brother’s War, is a story that no person should have to tell. As the name implies, it’s about her brother and the effects that can occur within a person who “survives” the ordeals they have gone through during combat. When I was younger and going to college, I worked in a warehouse with a couple of guys who had served in Viet Nam, and frankly, their stories scared the living hell out of me. I think about these guys when I look at the images from Jessica’s work and wonder how much they have had to live through after the fact. The crazy part is that this is a story that needs to be told, as PTSD is a very real and all too often deadly condition. I have to commend Jessica for having the strength and courage to investigate and tell her brother’s story in such a beautiful way.
Beyond this, of course, there is more to talk about too. Her storytelling endeavors move through other works as well, and a fairly recent foray into motion-based visuals rounds out her practice quite nicely. It is all of these things that led me to ask so many questions of her, and thankfully she was more than willing to oblige my ramblings. The photographs from Jessica Hines make you think and make you feel, and I am thrilled to have this chance to share her work and words with you.
The Transmutation of Memory #19, from My Brother’s War
Bio -
Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines, uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Hines lectures and exhibits her award-winning work throughout North and South America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.
Things are not as they seem. Nor are they otherwise. ~ The Lankavatara Sutra
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thank you for taking the time for us to learn more about your work and creative process, Jessica. As usual, I will ask you to give us some insight into what started you down the road of the visual arts, and was it always photography that first interested you?
Jessica Hines: Thank you, Michael, for inviting me to speak with you. I’m honored!
MK: Are there any people or events that you can credit for some of your earliest inspirations to further your photographic practice?
JH: Although, as a small child, I was compelled to draw and make things out of mud or clay, my fascination with photography probably began in infancy because some of my earliest memories involve my father, who was an artist, photographing the family with his Brownie Hawkeye camera. Perhaps some of my earliest childhood memories are fused with the resulting photographs themselves -- hybrid realities experienced by way of both memory and photographic evidence. I was fascinated by the way that this “magic box” could replicate the 3D world and return it to me on a flat piece of paper.
At this young age, I didn’t yet realize how prominently photography would one-day feature in my life. And it wouldn’t be long before I was to be sent away to live with various families, beginning at the age of four. The photographs I brought with me would become remnants of my missed family and home: paper surrogates, representations, and memory cues. Although I had limited contact with my family while growing up, it was as if, in the beginning, I was indoctrinated into the arts and then sent off, like a sailboat, drifting along feeling very much on my own, but instilled with a confidence that came from the love and encouragement of my father.
When I was 13 years old, my dear next-door neighbors surprised me with a gift of a 35 mm camera for Christmas. I was overjoyed. They knew how much I loved photography and it was this gift that allowed me to begin to explore the power of photography at this young age.
As a teen, I attended a high school that offered a fine arts program for gifted students, called Honors Art, and so it came to be that I spent my high school afternoons enrolled in painting, ceramics, acting classes, jewelry making, and finally, my great love: photography. We had a darkroom in which to develop film and print black & white images. I went wild with experiments, spending long hours in the darkroom loving everything about it – the dim light, the sound of running water, my intense focus as I placed the exposed paper into the developing tray to see, as if by pure magic, the white paper revealing the captured image. This process became a great source of happiness.
MK: What is it that you get out of creating photographs? Is there an overriding theme in your work that you feel best represents you as an artist?
JH: Having made drawings as early as three or four years old, as I am told, I dictated stories to my mother who wrote them down in a blank book and I illustrated them with my drawings. So it seems that I began early as a storyteller and when I realized the storytelling capacity of photographs, I became hooked.
Recently, one of my video cameras, by happenstance, recorded me as I was photographing in the wetland. Upon viewing the video, I was shocked to see how still I stood for the entire length of the video, not moving an inch. I was so completely absorbed in observing the environment that I seemed to dissolve into water and light, becoming a set of eyes and nothing more. When I make photographs, I lose myself. I like disappearing from this world and entering another one that exists only in my imagination and only in the way the camera can record it. I become entranced and it’s the best feeling in the world. Even when I return from a photographing session and find that I do not favor the photographs I made, it doesn’t matter because I enjoyed being immersed in the creative process. I forget the world. I also know that I have stories to tell and for me, the photograph, with its claim to reality, is the best medium with which to do so.
For those who spend their lives as an artist, I think most will eventually see a track record emerge – something that links their imagery together, even in diverse bodies of work. What is that link? For me, photography is a way to investigate the nature of reality. As many other artists do, my approach is somewhat like that of a scientist, experimenting with a sometimes surprising outcome, and exploring and clarifying concepts for myself. I notice, too, that my images suggest a set of observing eyes, a witness. I definitely see connecting threads in my various bodies of work and I know that they stem from key events in my childhood and life circumstances.
Overriding themes to my work include noticing oddities, a fascination with mystery, coincidences, by humor, and by places that seem foreboding, dream-like. For years, I kept a journal of my dreams and studied the work of Carl G. Jung to better understand the unconscious mind. The dream journal served as inspiration to my photographic work.
MK: I wanted to examine the making of what appears to be your most signature collection, My Brother’s War. This is an extensive and heart-wrenching body of work that tells a story of the horrors of the war in Viet Nam, most especially the effects that occur after a survivor, your brother, returns home. Can you give us some background on how this work came about? Also, some clarity on a significant aspect of it - that of the telling of his story in illustrated chapters, much like a novel or biography.
JH: For years, I put the experience of loss – the loss of my brother and the loss of most of my family -- out of my mind. One of my foster mothers, a Wave during World War II, who took care of me for the longest time of all foster parents, also committed suicide when I was 15. Trauma and loss were a part of my upbringing.
As for what happened to my brother, Gary, it took 20+ years for me to finally come to terms with that. It was too painful and I did not talk about it and I put it out of my mind. In fact, some time ago while cleaning a closet, the top shelf proved to be unreachable even with a ladder. I could not see if anything was there and was forced to use a mirror to peer into the far reaches of this deep shelf. I could see a shape – dark and wrapped, pushed to the back. I used a tool to pull it toward me. Having no idea whatsoever what this could be, I was shocked to open it and find the folded American flag that had been draped over my brother Gary’s casket. Apparently, I could not bear to have it in my everyday world yet I couldn’t part with it either. So I hid it as far away as possible and completely put it out of my mind. I had no memory of its existence or of even placing it there. I also hid the box of Gary’s letters and mementos in the same closet, high on a shelf, never to be opened.
More years passed.
One day, an acquaintance who taught political science called me to inquire about the letters that Gary had written home. He was teaching a class about the politics of the war in Viet Nam and wanted to borrow some of them to allow his students to read real letters from an actual soldier – to make their experience of the class a deeper one. I had not read the letters for probably 20 years and I was at first hesitant. I knew I would have to read them before handing them over to others and I knew it might be a heavy experience. But I agreed. And from there came my newly reacquainted (and imagined) relationship with my brother – who I never really came to know well in life. When I began to read the letters, I could hear Gary’s voice, I could see my childhood self and surroundings – relive the time period. Most importantly, it seemed that Gary was alive again. My memories returned. It was mostly pleasant to remember this and was wonderful to have him in my life again during my nightly readings of his letters. Even though some letters were disturbing, I looked forward to reading them.
I can still remember the night I finished reading the last letter. I was alone and it was the middle of the night. It felt terrible, knowing that no more letters existed. I had reached the end and it felt like yet another death. I got up to try to find more anyway, searching through the box of mementos. It was then that I discovered that Gary had fallen in love with a Vietnamese woman whom he planned to marry, and this girlfriend had written secret messages to him in the pages of an English-Vietnamese dictionary. This was the first I’d known of this! I was captivated and shocked.
So it came to be that it was through my deep curiosity and desire to express to others what I learned that caused me to begin this photographic project. I began using B&W 35 mm film and didn’t think it would take very long to make the project – maybe several months. I had nightmares during the first week and wondered whether or not I would be able to carry on but they stopped and I became obsessed with making discoveries and expressing them photographically. But this work turned into 13 years. Because so many years passed, I changed, my vision changed, and thus so did my imagery. The early black and white work was essential to the story because it expressed my childhood self who I was closest to when that work first emerged. This is why I incorporated toys into the pictures. But the next year, I went to Viet Nam – and the work looked entirely different. I was immersed into a foreign environment, did not know what to expect, and it was a place that had occupied my imagination for most of my life. Chapters became my way of telling the story over a long span of time, each chapter revealing new discoveries and various aspects of my journey – all essential. For this story to unfold, it simply took years to happen because, first of all, it was enormously emotionally draining, and it also took years to locate missing people and to finally call them. Life also had its upheavals during this time period and I was thrown off base many times.
I actually began the notion of addressing my brother’s wartime experiences in an early image made in the series, Prima Materia. It was made sometime between the years 1999 and maybe 2004. Gary had given me a dictionary for Christmas one year when I was a child, and for the photograph, I propped it up and included one of his photographs sent home from Chu Lai. The title is Reservoir of Memory. But I never made any more images about him until about 2006 when I began My Brother’s War.
The images speak about love, loss, family, resilience, courage, despair, healing, and the search for understanding.
Reservoir of Memory, from Prima Materia
Disabled American Veteran, from My Brother’s War
Gary, Untitled #1, from My Brother’s War
The Remembrance #1, from My Brother’s War
The Remembrance #10, from My Brother’s War
MK: The emotional toll of creating a body of work that sits so close to home like this is incredible. There must have been instances of questioning what you were doing and why. You obviously knew going in that this was not to be any simple exercise, yet you persevered through eleven distinct chapters of Gary’s story. What are your feelings towards the project now that you have completed it, or perhaps you feel there could be more now that some time has passed and you can look back at it with some hindsight?
JH: Creating this work DID take en enormous emotional toll – but it was work that I felt I needed to do for a number of reasons, the first being that I wanted to understand was what happened to my brother. When vets return from war, many will not discuss what happened and Gary was one of them. He rarely talked about his experiences at all and my only memory of him addressing the war at all was when he spoke of reading his own letters. He once told me how shocked and disappointed he was to have written scary letters home to our parents, not thinking at the time how his words might upset our parents. For example, he brought up the point that he closed one letter saying that he needed to stop writing because he could hear mortars exploding down the beach. Because letters were the ONLY communication then – no phone calls whatsoever – my parents, nor I, had any idea if Gary was still alive when the letter finally reached them. He also sent a photograph of himself pointing to a bullet hole in the helicopter he rode, demonstrating that he had been shot at, in which we know scared our parents half to death.
I never once questioned making this project. In fact, I was hell bent on getting answers – when I found a list of Gary’s army friends’ names and addresses, I called every name in the US directory to find them – of course, I could only do this with more unusual names where there were fewer. I tracked people down using some crazy tactics – there was a site that helped me called “Find a Neighbor”. I typed in an address of someone who I was sure was an old friend and army buddy of Gary’s but who never answered the phone. The site provided a list of neighbors and phone numbers. So I called one, explained myself, and asked if they could deliver a message to this person to call me. It worked! I was obsessed with getting answers and relentless in my approach. Thirteen years of effort. I have many stories I could tell!
I feel great about having finished the project – but at the same time, I have some sadness because it feels as though I somehow lose contact with Gary. Because this project consumed so much of my life, it feels sad that it is coming to a close. But it was time. My Yoshino Cherry tree bloomed last year and allowed me to finish the work in a way that I could never have predicted. I DO still feel compelled to make more images and, in fact, just made a new one – a key image, I think, this week. There are still a few more I may yet make before the book is published. If I didn’t have a day job, this work would have been completed considerably sooner.
Using the camera, for me, was like having a shield in battle. I could see through the lens as if peering down through a microscope. It put a kind of distance between this difficult subject and me.
MK: Is there a long term goal for My Brother’s War?
JH: I have plans to publish the work as a book. I also hope to continue to exhibit this work. Ultimately, I would love to see the story as a feature film. I want to remind people, the world over, the untold story of what happens in the aftermath of war.
MK: I notice that there are a few other collections of work you’ve made that continue your storytelling process towards photography - Southern Stories, Sprit Stories, and Odd Stories - yet they are vastly different than My Brother’s War. Where the previous works involved a deep and introspective examination, these seem to maintain more of a responsive attitude to your surroundings. How have you changed subject matter so significantly, but still retain this storytelling aspect of your process?
JH: There is something fascinating to me about the way a photograph can tell a story. Photographs are unique in the sense that they have a claim to reality -- and yet we know they are not reality. Photographs are persuasive which is why we see them in advertising. They have a power all their own. I don’t think that the process of creating photographic imagery – at least in my work -- matters to the final image. It speaks to us regardless. I think there are times when the process is part of the story and in those instances, it is important for an audience to know this.
All of the aforementioned work was mostly created simultaneously. I work on many projects at once, changing mindsets as the need arises. I always push forward, trying new approaches, new subject matter, I risk failing. If we don’t fail, we are not pushing to new ground – which is what I am always after. I try to open my mind to new possibilities and all of my work, regardless of the differing of appearances, is inspired by mystery and created by an internal and driven force.
I am interested in a lot of things – in college; I wanted to study far too many subjects to graduate in four years! It took me longer because I did take extra courses in subject matter that interested me, for example, astronomy, anthropology, and genetics. My work is diverse because my interests are. I do what is necessary to visually express the stories I have to tell, whether I use film or digital, make drawings, record sounds, and make videos.
The Remembrance #20, from My Brother’s War
The Imaginings #15, from My Brother’s War
The Imaginings #16, from My Brother’s War
I Pray For Your Spirit #8, from My Brother’s War
The Mystery #3, from My Brother’s War
MK: Looking further into your work, I see that you’ve made a move into motion-based imagery as well. How does A Private Map of the Animate fit into your aesthetic?
JH: A Private Map of the Animate expresses my love of mystery, of the odd magic of life, of the hidden world, especially the hidden natural world. I have a long-standing interest in the sciences – physics, astronomy, paleontology, genetics, mythology, anthropology, and the list goes on. I also love the notion of how chance changes our lives. Sometimes chance happenings occur and we don’t even realize that they have and have altered our lives. The videos involve chance happenings. I play a role by deciding, in the first place, to put cameras into the wetland, I choose locations where I imagine that, if I were another animal, I might go – and the cameras go up in those places. When the memory cards are brought in for each batch, I might have as many as 2000 one-minute videos to look through as quickly as possible to find the worthy clips. My role is thus editor and collector.
What I try to do with my camera explorations is to reveal what is hidden, reveal what exists in other realms that could be the mind but also what is out of sight.
MK: Does your photography inform these videos, and were they the spark that led you to find out what the natural world was doing when we are not paying attention?
JH: Yes, I think my photography definitely informs these videos. They are all about mystery, learning about the natural world (I could also say “world” but the natural world is what truly runs the show). We are not in control. Nature is. What inspired me to make the videos came about in a happenstance way. We built the house here in the woods and at night, I could hear sounds that could have come from monkeys if I didn’t know better. Strange noises in the night and in the day as well. It was massively frustrating to me because it was dark and I could not see what was right outside my window, maybe only 10 or 15 feet away. Some years later (still not knowing what made these various sounds), I happened to be home when the sun was in a particular place in the sky and it caused a bright rainbow to appear over the water. I was shocked and amazed and researched it to find why it was happening. The very same day, I bought chest-high waders so that I could venture out with my camera. I did not want to be confined to the water’s edge. The still photographs were gratifying as I spent long periods watching the light move across surfaces, listening, and seeing. But still, I wanted to know more and researched the video cameras. I went further still by finding a tiny video camera that I fit onto my cat’s collar and he willingly made videos for me. It worked in a similar way to the swamp cameras in that it recorded in color during the day and black & white infrared at night and this time, provided a view from the perspective of an animal. After years of living with me, I finally learned what it was that my beloved cat companion had been doing all those years when he disappeared into the night. I have thousands of films that he made for me. I love that they are all made from another animal’s perspective, showing me what interested him, what it looked like to climb a tree and jump down, to hunt, to run and hide underneath the neighbor’s house and double-dip by eating dinners out next door. It was a lot of fun. One aspect of this kind of video making is the surprise element involved – and chance.
MK: Does a body of work ever begin to form strictly through the editing process? Have you ever changed the direction of a body of work midstream?
JH: Yes, this has happened. I love the surprises involved in the process of editing and my discovery came about when I put a variety of images onto my computer screen for comparison and shrunk them down to fit. A chance happening occurred when I noticed that some of these images worked together as one image – combined. I would never have figured this out had I not placed them on the screen and then proceeded to notice that colors and lines and emotion all matched and lined up perfectly – as if I had made them on purpose this way. It was all the result of serendipity combined with my own decisions. Some of the images in My Brother’s War, the diptychs and so on, came about from this process.
A Love Story #13, from My Brother’s War
The Beginning #56, from My Brother’s War
The Transmutation of Memory #4, from My Brother’s War
The Transmutation of Memory #22, from My Brother’s War
MK: Do you find it better to construct your images in a mindful way or work more intuitively?
JH: When I work in the studio making still lives, I begin with a concept – an idea that I am going to make a picture about something and I pull out some materials that feel right to work with. But then intuition takes over at that point. The process of constructing an image in the studio vs. finding something out in the world -- I use different mindsets -- and yet the same heart and mind make them.
MK: Was there a specific point in time where you felt that you had found your voice in photography and became satisfied with the direction of your work? Do you ever truly find yourself in a good place with your images, or are you always searching for more?
JH: That is a great question. I think I vacillate between feelings of accomplishment and feelings of failure. Thinking more on this, it is probably a good thing to feel both of these. We need to feel good about what we’re making sometimes or we end feeling exhausted and perhaps give up eventually if there is no satisfaction. But to become too comfortable is to become stagnant. I feel it’s important to push ourselves to new ground.
MK: Do you study what others are doing, and do you find their influence in your image-making?
JH: Yes, I love seeing what others are making, whether it is photography or another form of art. I love keeping my thumb on the pulse of photography as it’s practiced around the world. What I find so wonderful about it is that it is as close as anything I can think of that allows me to come up inside someone else’s head and see the world in the way that they do.
I find inspiration in many places. Sometimes the inspiration comes from a poem or a passage in a book or in witnessing a random event. The one thing that I like about living in the 21st century is that we can see work from all over the world – it comes to us – we no longer need to travel to see it – although seeing some works in person is a far superior viewing experience.
The Transmutation of Memory #14, from My Brother’s War
I Pray For Your Spirit #1, from My Brother’s War
The Belongings #5, from My Brother’s War
I Pray For Your Spirit #10, from My Brother’s War
The Reconciliation #13, from My Brother’s War
MK: In speaking to future generations of photographers, do you have any words of wisdom to those setting out to make their mark in the photographic world?
JH: Follow your heart and be wild at heart. Photograph what matters to you. Go to museums. One can visit museums online that exist all over the world -- and look at what they are showing. Read. Consider quality cinema and music for inspiration. And before you pick up the camera: think. Not enough thinking goes on. And then…when you finally do pick up your camera, let your intuition take over. When we photograph this way, and get into the flow – as “the dancer becomes the dance” – we make our best work.
MK: What’s new? Are there any other projects you are currently working on that we might see soon? What about updates to your other works?
JH: I am preparing to make a new series of still lives from a long-time collection of items. I love making still lives because, like a painter, we create something from nothing. Being in the pandemic means that my specialty of working this way comes in handy and keeps me sane. I am grateful to be an artist.
Another project in the works is the making of more video films, clinking some of them together to make slightly longer statements. And from the videos, I have begun to make painted stills.
Southern Stories is ongoing and will last for as long as I live here – and if I return for visits, more photographs will be made! It is exciting to wonder about that road ahead -- “what lies around the bend?”
You can find more of Jessica’s work on her website here.
All photographs, ©Jessica Hines
