Jeannie Hutchins interview
by Amy Parrish
Copy Editor: Nicole Sharkey
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Lately, Canadian American artist, Jeannie Hutchins, has been looking for cracks. Looking for light. I first met Hutchins in the fall of 2014. We had both signed up for ten weeks of project-centered coursework through Maine Media Workshops +College and an additional ten weeks of historic process mentorship. I can still recall Brenton Hamilton surveying a fresh tri-color gum print over her shoulder; “That's a Whistler sky.” There has always been a resplendent melancholy to her work as she delves into both visual and existential realities.
Hutchins’ practice includes various techniques: gum bichromate and carbon transfer printing, experiments with wet cyanotypes, working in the digital darkroom, printing on alternative surfaces, and rephotographing prints with materials such as glitter, textured paper and fairy lights. Yet evidence of her hand remains elusive: the process is inextricably bound to the image. Looking at her work is like looking upon a mystery.
Hutchins made a serious return to photography post-retirement. At present, she is working towards an MFA at Maine Media, one year shy of her seventieth birthday. “The world goes by, and we keep climbing our hills and watching our sunsets.” She speaks of the privilege of living in coastal New England during the pandemic; but her words resonate on a deeper level.
It’s a little after 9 am on the morning of our call, and she’s already hiked the Maiden Cliff Trail near her home in Camden, Maine. We haven’t seen each other in a couple of years, and while catching up, I ask about some of her projects I’ve only viewed on a computer screen (tactile works better defined as objects rather than images). One series—a figurative and forested collection of carbon transfers and gum over cyanotype—is said to be beautifully mounted, framed…and collecting dust bunnies. “I’ve moved on, Amy.” When Hutchins completes a body of work, there is a release.
“I am not afraid of death. Becoming dust, and eventually stardust, is OK. Life still goes on. Even stars have cycles, ultimately burning out, exploding, re-birthing. However, I choose to believe that something in me will persist as more than just stardust.”
It is the way Hutchins processes the unknown which stirs me most. She doesn’t shy from big questions and, in looking for light, wades through the dark. Hers are the conversations I yearn for when chatting with friends or strangers. The work is an invitation to look through portals to the other side, whatever that may be. She recites a poem written around the time we first met. It has anchored her creative exploration over the years, now included in the project statement for her latest series, Unbounded (2021):
No Answers
I don’t believe in a god yet she confronts me.
I ask what is beyond the stars yet, don’t know what is here.
I feel the movement of time but I don’t know where it is going.
I want to know what is next but can’t even know what is now.
I ask if my future lies in the Abyss and grapple with that possibility.
I feel the draw of my culture’s mythology but don’t trust the metaphors.
I choose but don’t know what I’ve chosen.
(The following interview has been modified for publication.)
AMY PARRISH: How would you describe your creative process?
JEANNIE HUTCHINS: I have always worked with my hands. I never feel a photographed image is “complete” until I have actively done something to the original. Some of the things I may do include rephotographing the original image reflected in mylar, printing out a photograph and then rephotographing it with lights (reflected or backlit), and using the camera again to photograph the image behind translucent paper, fabric, or another image. Even after doing these things, I may feel I need more of my “hand” in the image.
In the recent past, I have felt the imagery is best expressed with the tactile and visual characteristics of handmade prints, and I have used a mix of cyanotype and gum bichromate. A couple of years ago, I learned the multi-step process of carbon transfer printing. Traditionally the process results in gorgeous black and white prints generally made on luscious white art papers. To satisfy the maker in me, I often modify the process by painting on paper before the image is applied. I also make the tissue in colors like blueberry, raspberry, and tangerine instead of carbon black. Believe me, by the time you’ve prepared the image, the negative, the colored tissue, the sized paper, and put it all together, you really do feel you have made something.
That being said, much of my current work has looked best as a digital print, though that print may be of an image that was once a cyanotype, or behind a piece of washi or glitter-coated vellum. Some of my final images come from temporal moments captured only when a flash went off, or lights were turned on. (I guess that is no different than what normally happens when one photographs.)
PARRISH: What you’re describing sounds like hours, if not days, of work for a single piece, pairing processes that are both measured and highly unpredictable. Do you consider yourself a planner, or do you work more intuitively?
HUTCHINS: I recently did a talk that I called Planning for Serendipity. It was about a particular cyanotype process that gives very unexpected results that can be quite beautiful if you do a little planning. In my photographic practice, I know that if I do things like get up early in the morning and go to the ocean, I will likely get some satisfying images, besides sunrises. On the other hand, I am more likely to spend a lot of time photographing without an end in mind. It is this second scenario that has given me the majority of my successful images.
Most of my work doesn’t come easy to me. I have accepted that to get to the point of having an image that expresses something takes many deliberate steps. It takes a lot of patience to photograph nearly daily, study what I’ve collected, then explore how the images can be developed to create a sense of traversing a temporal boundary, a liminal space, or a visual pathway between the expected, photographed, image and the final works on paper.
PARRISH: You often touch upon these liminal spaces and pair them with both visuals and metaphors associated with darkness and light. I’m curious if you equate light to traits such as optimism/goodness/purity/love? Or is there neutrality to it?
HUTCHINS: I see light in two ways. The first is in terms of practical applications. Photography has always been about light. Physically it is light that alters the chemistry or the pixels so that an image is recorded. Our ability to see those images (both in the real world and as photographs/screen images) is also based on the availability of light to the photoreceptor cells within our eyes. As a photographer, I can selectively choose what light gets recorded and, as such, can render an image to my creative preferences.
About a year ago, I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s song, Anthem. The line, “there is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in,” made me see that perhaps it is because of all the darkness and imperfections that we are able to admit the light. Perhaps all of my dark work was not in vain but a precursor for the potential for optimism and hope.
I decided to take an active role and started constructing images that incorporated unexpected sources of light. It was a way to take control over a set of imagery whose darkness always seemed out of balance with the initial creative intent. I acknowledge that I can’t have the light without the darkness, but I am thrilled that I can imply a simultaneous experience of hope and optimism.
In the novel Life of Pi, Jann Martel presents two stories: one an imaginary tale of fantastical survival and the other a story of the probable truth of death and terror. In the end, he asks, which would you prefer to believe? I don’t really know what my future—both near and distant—holds, but it is a lot more appealing if I choose to add light.
PARRISH: Can you tell me about what you’re working on now?
JEANNIE: I have a series of eight images with a wee narrative made into a slideshow. It’s called Unbounded. I’m trying to see what creativity lies on the other side of our normal bounds of reality. It touches on similar themes of the unknown, time, transitions.
PARRISH: When you say you are interested in the other side of reality, are you talking about death, or are there alternative scientific, spiritual, or paranormal shifts you’re considering as well?
HUTCHINS: I’m not sure there’s much of a difference between all of those. You know, I’m going to be seventy next year, and I start thinking about things like that. I have a logical-leaning mind that doesn’t give me the answers I want so I’ve tried to find them through my creative practice. I often think it matters that you come up with an answer, any answer, but maybe it doesn’t matter.
PARRISH: But yet you still create.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. (pause) Yeah. That might lead to a metaphysical question, “What would you do instead?” (pausing again) But that’s alright; there’s really no choice.
PARRISH: We really are all bumbling around together through this same, unknown universe, aren’t we? Perhaps that’s what draws me to your work: yours is an individual response to a collective experience. Would you say that’s what inspires you? Do you have words of wisdom to share with others on a similar creative path?
HUTCHINS: When I try to answer the question of “What inspires me,” I invariably get caught up in some circular reasoning, for what inspires me is recognizing that an image I just made communicates to me what it is that I want to express. And I don’t necessarily know what I want to express until I see the image.
There are at least two aspects of photography: the process and the outcome. The process of making, itself, is multifaceted; a mix of using the skills you have with being open to following your intuition. You should remember that not every outcome will be the message that viewers will understand, but its existence is valid if both the process and outcome resonate with who you are as a person.
To view more of her existential exploration, visit www.jeanniehutchins.com.
About the Author
Amy Parrish is an internationally-exhibited artist exploring word and form. She served as the Director of Operations and instructor for The Light Space; a program offering photography training to young women affected by the commercialized sex trade and to staff members of anti-trafficking organizations. In between long-term projects in India and Thailand, she has focused on her craft in Midcoast Maine, traveled extensively across the US, and currently writes reviews for LensCulture, a global platform for contemporary photographers.
Through the previous decade, Parrish worked as an award-winning portrait photographer, teaching other professionals within the industry through conferences, workshops, and other outlets. Her studio practice was filmed for two seasons of Photovision and her work was recognized as “Best in Portrait” in WPPI’s international photography competition.
In 2014 her focus shifted from commercial work to very personal, hand-processed image-making. She incorporated found objects, sculpture and 19th-century historic processes, brushing emulsions onto paper and exposing them to light. Her fine art imagery has been selected for exhibition in venues such as the Huntington Museum of Art, received the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, as well as attaining recognition in several other juried selections and publications.