Photography: Despair
joeann hart
In psychology, contagion is the spreading of an emotional or mental state. On the eve of the pandemic I was already struggling with profound losses in my life, so when the world shut down in fear and isolation it felt as if it was reflecting my own fragility. Too shattered to document my experience with the written word, I used self-portraiture as a means to grapple with both mortality and identity. By learning to explore my emotions through visual narrative, I discovered I was no longer the person I had been. I existed in a liminal space where beauty competed with brokenness and despair. The resulting images record this period of transformation. In this particular photo, Despair, I stand before a clothesline airing curtains of the dead.
JoeAnn Hart
JoeAnn Hart is the author of Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s (University of Iowa Press, April, 2019), a true crime memoir. Her novels are Float (Ashland Creek Press, 2013) a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean, and Addled (Little, Brown, 2007) a social satire. Her short fiction and essays have been published in a wide range of literary magazines and anthologies, including Orion, The Hopper, Prairie Schooner, The Sonora Review, The Woven Tale, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, and others. Her work, which also includes articles, photography, and drama, often explores the relationship between humans and their environments.