Praise For Sick Women

Women’s strength and marginalization is a theme I consider all the time in my own work.  As a single mother to three girls, thoughts of the female world always seem to come to the forefront.  Sometimes its battlefield, when you think you’ve won there is a mountain of history sitting behind you that still keeps antiquated ideas rooted in the culture. Looking at the tag last Sunday, an image by a longtime IG friend, Heather @poppybay spoke to me about these ever-swirling thoughts. The image of the blindfolded/blinded woman is one I’ve used myself with frequency.  She stares at us with all of her beauty, almost judging, but she’s hooded.  She can’t see but she does. She knows all.

This beautiful piece will haunt you for a long time.

Heather:  I was the kind of child who could lie in the grass for hours, talking to the trees, making up whole new worlds in my head.  Having come from a family of artists, a sense of imagination wasn’t unusual, but I didn’t imagine myself as a visual artist.  As I’ve gotten older, my desire to linger, let my mind wander, hasn’t gone away, but the responsibilities of the adult world don’t leave room for such things… until I found mobile photography.

Even after I discovered my passion for film and then digital photography, there was a technical coldness that I just couldn’t shake.  The iPhone, along with tools like Snapseed and Image Blender, have opened up a new whole world of expressiveness and versatility. With these tools, I generate an altering of reality, manifesting of my dream-life, expanding and exercising of my creativity.  The weight of my dslr has hung less and less around my neck as, through mobile photography, I can go out and create in my own space, wherever I find my inspiration.

I recently found myself alone in a small Chinese teahouse tucked away behind a garden in my neighborhood.  The experience of solitude was unusual and precious.  Being alone, I looked around for self-entertainment and found a nook of used books under the cash register.  A beat up copy of Gary Snyder’s RipRap was in the mix.  Flipping through the pages, I came across the poem Praise for Sick Women.  It inspired an image that would pay homage to the mythology behind Gary Snyder’s poem, finding strength and glory even in history’s weakest assessment of women.

The female is fertile, and discipline

(contra naturam) only

confuses her

Who has, head held sideways

Arm out softly, touching,

A difficult dance to do, but not in mind

Excerpt from Praise for Sick Women

by Gary Snyder

You can see more of Heather’s very strong and thought -provoking work on Instagram @poppybay

About Author

Rebecca Cornwell

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