J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Odette England
Episode #32 Summary
An illuminating treatise on gender, rural farm life, invisible labor and non-conforming behavior.
Episode Notes
A manual on female dairy cows provides a portal for Odette England to unearth the latent truths of her girlhood, formed in the deeply gendered community of family-run dairy farming. Sequencing hauntingly mysterious images with succinctly insightful text, England explores conventions, offering an expansive and empowering response in their place.
In this book group, Odette England discusses, among other things:
Listening and living with your work
Making photographs as a conversation - before having a context or conceptual frame
Employing sincerity
An economy of text and image
Making in community and the importance of collaboration
Color as character
“A vertical experience of a horizontal wish”
Non-conforming females
Photos as slippery storytellers
Gifts & Omens
Referenced in the episode
Sexual Politics of Me - Carol J. Adams
Ordinary Affects - Kathleen Stuart
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind