Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Photographer whose atmospheric images of her children on a remote Virginia farm brought critical acclaim and controversy.
On the island
Eight records
"I would take Keith Jarrett, and in particular I would take the Colin Concert part one because of the passion that he develops with the music. Almost … That degree of passion in the production of his art is what I feel sometimes in my own."
"I chose Odetta because she was for me the voice of the civil rights movement … I chose Take This Hammer."
"It's the song Trustful Hands. I chose it because I asked my daughter Jessie how she would like to be represented … she suggested this, and I think it's an absolutely apt choice. She has adopted two foster children, and she felt that if she was going to be represented by any action of her life, it would be the trustful hands that she is now holding these children with."
"It's my daughter Virginia at age maybe fifteen, sixteen, singing a solo at her boarding school. It is O Holy Night … It's so beautiful, and it's so her. It's so precise."
"We're going to hear Frank Muller. He's reading a passage from Moby Dick … this one passage describes a painting in the Spouter Inn. And I was so taken by the description … I used it as a springboard for my next body of work after the family pictures."
"This song was on his tablet … He calls it County Seat, and he wrote it and played it … it just moves me a great deal. I love hearing his voice."
Oboe Concerto in C major, RV 452, Adagio
"It's Vivaldi's oboe concerto in C major, R V four five two, the Adagio, and it's performed by Heinz Halliger. It's just so poignant."
You Are My FriendFavourite
"It's a singer named Sylvester … it's You Are My Friend."
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:36How much thought do you give to other people's perspective and what they take away from your work? Are you thinking about that as part of your process?
It truly has shocked me to find how people interpret my work. And it shouldn't. I'm just naive. When people, in my view, misunderstand my work, it's always a surprise to me.
Presenter asks
4:25Some of your pictures were taken out of a gallery in Texas earlier this year, weren't they, by local officials? How did that feel to you?
It was scary. I was very surprised but in retrospect I probably shouldn't have been. … I think it's a harbinger of things to come. I think this is going to happen more and more to people. The pictures of the children are just a flashpoint in the new Christian nationalist movement. … I just want to be left alone.
Presenter asks
7:52Tell me a little bit about your father, Robert. How do you remember him?
Oh, he was remarkable. I devoted the whole last part of my first book, Hold Still, to my father, because he was a cipher, on the one hand, but he also was just so extraordinary. … He was a deeply humanistic and intellectual man. He read everything, traveled widely.
The keepsakes
The book
Marcel Proust
You're there on a desert island and you have very few personal details, obviously, and I think to immerse yourself in a life so richly detailed as he does in that book I've read a third of it. Would be a great comfort, right? It's 4,000 pages. … And he's of course a brilliant writer. Like a rally driver. He weaves through the traffic of his ideas and his concepts and his words so fluidly.
Presenter asks
16:51When did you start to understand what was happening? When did your eyes become open to the civil rights movement, to the conversations that were going on?
Shamefully late, when I was sent away to school at age 15, 16, to a very liberal boarding school in Vermont, that's when, and I had a black teacher. … He very, very gently illuminated the truth to me. But prior to that, my brother Chris had been very involved in the civil rights movement. He sat in down in North Carolina in the drugstores, and he went to prison 17 times. … He was beaten. He was pissed on. He was hit by a sword.
Presenter asks
27:51You were accused of being a bad mother among other things. How did you respond to that?
Well, I'm not sure very well. In general, I kind of adopted a proof is in the pudding, you know, that children grew up to be great. … All mothers who get accused of being bad mothers, it's almost indefensible. All you have is whether or not your children turned out okay. … I was an imperfect mother, like all mothers, but I think they turned out pretty well.
Presenter asks
35:58[Your son Emmett] took his own life. What got you through that experience? How did you survive it?
Oh, just making work. Every time I have profound grief, I go in the darkroom. … I go into the art room and I listen to music, which is why it was so hard to pick the songs for this program.
“That degree of passion in the production of his art is what I feel sometimes in my own.”
“My cluelessness as a child is so painful to me even now. I never thought it odd that Gee Gee came on Christmas morning and cooked and served and washed up … then went home to her own six children, you know.”
“I loved her, and they knew she loved me, which every white person says that in the South. Oh, my mammy just loved me. But … She did love me, there's no question.”
“Every time I have profound grief, I go in the darkroom. … I go into the art room and I listen to music, which is why it was so hard to pick the songs for this program.”
“I can't imagine the courage it took for him [Larry] to say yes. … he was … immediately, with alacrity, he said, 'Oh, yes, let's do it, let's do it.' … I think he has faith in my artwork.”
“They stop calling me controversial. How's that? It's the adjective that is like always appended to my name.”