viz.

On the Viz. blog  September 2009, Viz. Editor Noel Radley discussed Maureen R. Drennan’s photo series "Thin Ice," where Drennan proposes the potential losses to ice fishing with global warming. Radley recently interviewed Drennan about "Thin Ice" and being a finalist on the New York Times DotEarth blog/Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition. 

“A small story about a greater problem”: Interview with Maureen R. Drennan

Viz.:  I was talking to a colleague about your series of photos.   She said that when she thinks about visual rhetoric and the environment, she thinks of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”  She was struck by the contrast between “An Inconvenient Truth” as a visual rhetoric piece and what your series of photos are doing.

Drennan: With Al Gore’s movie, he was really trying to hammer home this situation that is imminent, and I think he’s trying to reach as many people as possible.  I think it was done very successfully.  It was done in a way where a lot of people could understand it.  It was accessible, and it was also dynamic and intense.  I know my work is not like that.  I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that.  That would be for a different photographer…I’m not a scientist.  I don’t claim to be an expert.

Viz.:  How do you think your photos compare to the other visualizations of climate change?

Drennan:  I hope this doesn’t come across as self-deprecating.  I think [my images] were a little more subtle.   It’s not super dynamic, but I think that’s okay.  It’s a small story that I think can relate to the big picture.  We’re all involved in small stories.  It’s what we’re involved in every day.  It makes up the big picture.   I think other visualizations of climate change are grand and monumental.  My pictures aren’t like that.  They’re a lot more quiet.

Viz.:  Can you describe how you began to take these pictures of ice fishing?

Drennan:  I’m from Manhattan, born and raised here in New York.  I’m really drawn to remote, beautiful places because it’s so different from what I’m accustomed to.  My husband Paul is from Rice Lake, Wisconsin, which is a very small town in northern Wisconsin.   When we would go visit his in-laws, I usually wander around and take pictures of the area. I was just really drawn to these beautiful, remote lakes, and the fact that there are these little shacks on the lake.  [For people who aren’t from a cold climate, ice-fishing] is sort of a foreign thing.  I was really drawn to it…What are they doing out there?  Why are there these little houses out there on the lake? I just instinctually wandered out there and started chatting with people and taking their picture and taking photographs of the landscape and the ice shacks.

What was initially so interesting was the community and how tight knit they are:  these temporary communities out on the ice.  They only last a few months, and people bond.  They become so close.  It’s like having a cabin in the summer at the lake.  It’s a little place—a little refuge that you go to—and you’re friends with the neighbors. You also (for safety reasons) have to be looking out for one another.  Even though it’s an isolated activity, there’s also a community aspect.

Viz.: How did your photos become part of the Artist as Citizen project?

Drennan: Even just in the two years that I have been doing this, the season got a little bit shorter.  The ice shacks went out later in the winter and came back earlier.  It’s way below zero—like 10 degrees below zero and 20 degrees below when the wind picks up—so I spend a lot of time in the shacks talking to people.  In talking to people this past winter, people [would say] how the season is changing and the ice is changing…That’s anecdotal.  I don’t think [the ice fishers are] studying charts and graphs, but it was interesting to hear.  It just got me thinking about these lovely communities and how this is a small story about a greater problem.

Viz.:  How did you select the images for the series?

Drennan:  I tried to pick the photos that spoke most to the humanity of these temporary communities… There’s also this fragility about it— I mean literally— because it ends every three months.  The water breaks up, and it becomes a lake again. I was looking for the photos that spoke to the fragility of the communities, the fragility of the ice, and then the overall fragility of the environment... But also this resilience as well.  It seems like it’s a constant juxtaposition of resilience and strength with fragility.  They go hand-in-hand. 

Viz.: In my blog post on Viz., I wrote about your photos as a narrative argument.  What do you see as the intersections of photography and narrative?

Drennan:  For myself personally, I’m very inspired by literature, especially writers like Flannery O’Connor and Annie Proux, who often write about people whose lives are dictated by the environment.  They are held up by the environment, but they’re also pushed down by it as well. I think this originally comes from being a New Yorker.  The environment, you feel like it doesn’t affect you, but of course it does.  It’s so different when you’re out of the city. Also, [with O’Connor and Proux, their characters are] flawed usually, but they have a lot of grace. I love that idea, because that’s like all of us.

I love narrative photography.  I try to do it…I love in photography how an image can be like a little poem.  It can be lyrical. It can transport you to another place, like poem could, or a really good short story. [A photo] can give you some information but leave out other things.

Viz.: Your photo series “Meet Me in the Green Glen” also works as a narrative.

Ben [the subject of the photo series, is]  a marijuana grower in California. We met a year ago and through this project have become close. Although marijuana is legal to grow and use in California within strict guidelines, there are situations in which it is still illegal. It is not culturally acceptable to grow or sell despite the fact that many people in the area grow pot and it is a large part of the local economy. There are other marijuana farmers and dealers in the region who make up a small community, but they mostly operate alone  They are socially and culturally isolated. The story I am communicating is not simply about pot growing, it is also about the experience of a lonely person and our relationship.

American Literature, in particular O’Connor and Proulx, have had a significant influence on my work. They write about anti-heroes, who are in a constant struggle with life and yet have grace. In describing landscape both writers evoke an ominously psychological and emotional sense of place in which the environment becomes a character unto itself and amplifies the aloneness of the characters.

Viz.:  Is there a story from the ice-fishers that relates to one of the images in the series?

Maureen:  Yes, I took [two separate pictures of two men], who were fishing near each other.    One is the picture of a guy kneeling; his name is Bob…[The other image is of a man] wearing one of those protector oxygen masks…He is dying of cancer; he is doing chemotherapy treatments….Bob was making the other guy laugh, and laugh and laugh.   They were so funny together.   They were real guys’ guys and very manly, but I was struck by how lovely they were together and how they have this amazing camaraderie…I saw that a few times with men who share a cabin together.  They’ll sleep there.  They have bunk beds, and they fish all day.  They drink beer.  So much of [the ice-fishing] is just to be together…The camaraderie really struck me.

Viz.: Do you think you make any arguments in the  ‘Thin Ice’ series?

I think [the images] make a strong case about community:  the resourcefulness and resilience and fragility at the same time.  I think it makes a pretty strong case for that.

About the photographer:  Maureen R. Drennan is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she was born.  She works at La Guardia community college in NYC teaching photography. Our conversation took place in September 2009 as a follow up to Drennan’s feature on the New York Times DotEarth blog as a finalist for the Artist as Citizen Burning Embers Competition. Her series “Thin Ice”  documents the winter ice fishing of 2009 and 2008 and the winter of 2008/2007 in northern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota.