Torn: An Interview with Manuela Thames
by Amy Parrish
Transported. That’s how I felt while reviewing a portfolio by Manuela Thames at the Promoting Passion Conference in Tucson last spring. Spread across the table were hauntingly beautiful prints from her series, Torn. Monochromatic images (old and new, digital and analog) had been ripped and reassembled into eighteen diptychs, positioning each fragment within a new context.
In this work, Thames scratches at emotion with a kinetic visual energy that can feel both unsettled and remarkably soothing. Gesture and place draw together dichotomies of history, of connection, of land, of memory. Her expressions are both familiar and otherworldly.
It was during our brief meeting that Thames mentioned this collection was in response to her family history in Germany and the present Ukrainian war. Now, months later, her photographs continue to move me. I wanted to share her work and learn even more.
Amy Parrish: What can you tell me about this project?
Manuela Thames: This series examines the effects and realities of living in a country at war: a beautiful country with beautiful people, torn apart. I started this series shortly after the start of the Ukrainian war.
Through the process of creating these images and the results, I visualize the darkness, grief, and pain, but I also visualize beauty, strength, resilience, and courage.
I used images of landscapes, flowers and trees, and self-portraits and tore them apart to recreate burials for the dead and graves for people buried alive. You can see tears, dirt, and sweat. You can see families are torn apart and people escaping to safer places. You can see underground shelters and war wounds, both physical and emotional. The wounds that will heal and the scars that remain.
I recreate these realities that are hard to face and difficult to think about. The realities we avoid and find too depressing and sad.
I have taken a lot of self-portraits over the years, and I have a large collection of prints that I either never sold or never used for anything. At the time I had just developed a couple of film rolls that I shot with my Holga camera. I shoot a lot of landscapes with my Holga camera as I feel very drawn to the imperfect results this camera produces. Looking at those photos, I almost feel like I am getting a glimpse of times past.
When I looked at the images, I started ripping a few apart and putting some back together as diptychs. This is how this whole series came about.
AP: Would you describe your work as a pre-planned or intuitive process?
MT: My process for this series was quite intuitive and was based on the strong emotional reactions I had when the war in Ukraine started. I usually make regular time for my art practice and write out or research what I want to work on. I often plan out photo shoots, but not in this case as I used prints (analog and digital) that I already had, for the most part. I knew I wanted to create something to process my thoughts and feelings about what was happening.
I started ripping up the photos spontaneously, but at the same time was quite deliberate about where exactly I would tear the image. I then worked on putting images back together in a way that made sense to me. There was quite a bit of trial and error involved, but I enjoy that process. I also added texture to some of the images by adding soil, water, and dust. Then, when I was pleased with the result, I rephotographed the final image and did some minor editing in Lightroom.
AP: What compelled you to start ripping up the photographs?
MT: I would say it was the result of an emotional reaction. It is quite satisfying to rip paper apart when you are upset with something, right?
Like a lot of people, I Initially reacted strongly to the start of the war. I followed the developments and woke up to the news. For days and weeks, I was glued to my phone.
I had so many of these prints that I didn’t know what to do with them. I knew I wasn’t going to throw them in the trash, but I guess I wanted to create something new from something old. I have always liked the aesthetic of a tear and loved the aesthetic of the Holga prints that I used for this series. Tearing up photographs is something I had done before for a series called “Trauma”, but I took the images deliberately for that purpose, to rip them into pieces and put them back together. In this series, it was more the use of prints that were laying around and a spontaneous decision to rip them all apart.
AP: I’m interested in that work as well; and your approach to generational trauma. Could you share more about these connections?
MT: Yes. Of course, I cannot speak for someone who currently lives in a war zone and is part of the daily terror. I know that I am not directly the victim of war trauma. But my parents and grandparents were. For my “Trauma” series, I did a lot of research into my family history, interviews with relatives, and some research on generational trauma. It was eye-opening and such an important part of understanding myself, my parents, my upbringing, and my struggles.
I have deep admiration for my grandparents who went through so many horrific things while raising small children. My paternal grandfather was born in Ukraine (although he was German, part of the Black Sea Germans), and my paternal grandmother was born in Poland. I can’t tell you exactly how they met and how they ended up in East Germany not too far from Berlin, but they had a farm there and that’s where my father grew up.
WWII was a difficult time for my grandparents.
Russian soldiers would terrorize my grandfather for years. They wanted him to be a spy for them, but he refused and then he had to live in hiding for a long time. My father told me that the Russians would come to their farm often, at random times to look for my grandfather. Sometimes they came in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day.
They shot the beloved family dog for no reason (probably for fun) when my dad was nine years old. They came a few times to attempt to rape my grandmother, but fortunately never did. My grandmother told her seven kids to surround her and scream very, very loud “because the Russian soldiers can’t deal with screaming children.” They did it every time the Russians came and approached my grandmother. Somehow, it did keep my grandmother safe.
My father has a few memories of feeling a gun right by his head or a rifle pointed at him or his siblings. But every time the Russian soldiers left without harming them.
They kept my grandfather as a prisoner of war. I can’t remember for how long, but my grandmother was on her own with seven kids for a while. There were a couple of times when they had to escape the farm and move toward the west. At one point, they traveled by wagon pulled by two horses, and Russian planes were flying towards them, flying so low, my dad said he still remembers seeing the pilots’ heads.
They shot at the track of refugees who were traveling by foot or using such wagons. My grandmother told her kids to get off the wagon and she drew them close to her and put her arms around them loudly praying for protection. One of the horses got hit and there were several bullet holes in the wagon but, once again, my grandmother and her kids survived this incident unharmed.
I could tell you more about such incidents and traumatic experiences they had. My father could probably write a whole book, but what I want to show you here is that war always affects the innocent the most — and it affects entire future generations.
I always loved my grandmother. She was so strong and calm with a very warm personality. I have such admiration for her bravery, her strong faith, and her resilience. And I guess, besides the darkness of war, the tears, the dirt, the fear, and the trauma, I want to show strength, bravery, and resilience in my images. Human beings are so incredibly strong and resilient. Watch the thousands of mothers who have left their husbands behind to fight and have taken their kids to a foreign country to be safe. How much strength, resilience, and bravery do you need to do something so hard?
My father told me a few years ago when I was already an adult, that he had nightmares about Russian soldiers coming to his house until he was in his mid-fifties. But then those nightmares stopped. For 40 years, my father had nightmares almost every night. And that’s only one aspect of how the war affected him.
I often wonder what other aspects of my dad’s life and personality were shaped by such traumatic experiences and ultimately shaped my personality, my upbringing, my fears, and my courage. I don’t specifically know the answer, but I know that it had a huge impact on me and my siblings and thus has an impact on my own children. Generational trauma is real and this current war will affect generations to come.
AP: That is a lot to carry; for the world to carry. And it reinforces the power of art for both individual and collective healing. As the creator of this work, what emotions did you find rising to the surface?
MT: I think fear is certainly one of the emotions. Fear and anger about the state of the world. Anger about authoritarian regimes. Anger because it is always innocent civilians that suffer the most. Anger that war is happening and will always continue to happen.
Also, helplessness. You watch from afar and there is not much you can do.
And worry. Worry that the longer the war in Ukraine will go on, the less the rest of the world will pay attention to it; but also, the longer it will go on the more likely it could still come to a significant escalation involving other countries, such as Germany.
manuelathames.com
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About the Artist
Manuela Thames is a photo-based artist and lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her husband and two children. Originally from Germany, she moved to the US in 2004 when she married her husband, who is American. Her background is in nursing and alternative health, but around 2008 she began to focus solely on photography after two life-changing events happened within one year: the death of her brother and the birth of her first child.
Her work consists largely of fine art self-portraits as she aims to explore the brokenness of humanity, the struggles of loss and grief, and her personal experiences with generational trauma and mental health struggles.
Within that, she continues to explore the human ability to cope, the strength that evolves out of suffering, and our common desire for healing and journey towards wholeness.
Her photography has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work has been published in numerous photographic journals and magazines.
She teaches workshops privately and through Santa Fe Workshops, and offers mentoring services as well.
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.