Janelle Lynch
Photo by Forrest Simmons
Can you talk about your path to fine art photography?
I was born into photography. My grandfather, with whom my mother, grandmother and I lived, was an amateur photographer. He loved photography and had many cameras. He mostly just took snapshots of family, but he also was friends with the Siegfried’s, who had a professional photography studio in Jamestown, where we lived. He had them photograph himself, me, and other family members. I was one year-old when I sat for my first formal portrait. One of my first memories is from when I was three years-old, sitting for Mrs. Siegfried. She used a large-format camera, similar to the one I used in graduate school 25 years later.
My grandfather died very young, when I was just four years-old. He had emphysema. A few years later, I found deep in my bedroom closet, a case with a bunch of his cameras in it—several different formats and flash units. I remember secretly playing with them and taking my first pictures of my body. I like to think that he left them there for me to discover.
For my tenth birthday, my mother gave me my first camera and then I started taking family snapshots. I later took pictures for the newspaper in high school and learned to print. I got my first professional camera right after high school as a gift from a boyfriend.
I went to the New School in New York for college and enrolled in photography, but dropped out essentially because of fear. I enrolled in a creative writing program instead.
In 1997, when I was 27, I decided that I needed to give myself the opportunity to pursue photography and I enrolled in an MFA program at the School of Visual Arts. I had a very important experience there with some exceptional teachers, including Stephen Shore, Penelope Umbrico, Carole Kismaric, and Joel Sternfeld.
Photo by Janelle Lynch from Another Way of Looking at Love: Red Berries (2015)
What are you most looking forward to right now in art or life?
I am discussing with a curator the possibility of participating in a two-person exhibition next year in Kyoto during the Kyotografie photography festival. The theme of the show is “unity,” and it would be held in a temple. As I believe you know, unity is a theme seminal to my work--really the driving force of my search for over two decades. So it feels fitting and like a great opportunity to celebrate the potential of unity and share it with a culture for which I have respect and admiration. I was in Kyoto in 2004 and it left an imprint on me. I feel a kinship philosophically and aesthetically with the place. Reflecting on my stay in Kyoto, I recall a sense of walking through peace.
What are the three things that bring you comfort when you're feeling down?
The first thing I thought of when I read the question was yoga. It's been an integral part of my life since the late 1990s. I practice at Modo, a lovely studio in New York, with a generous community of teachers. I practice for many reasons: to take care of my body and feel good physically, but I also specifically use it to shift the way I feel emotionally or to shift my state of mind. Knowing that it has that power and potential, brings me comfort, as does the actual practice of moving my body with my breath in the spirit of a moving meditation.
The second thing that came to mind is my relationship with Laurie, my best friend of 27 years. There aren't words to describe the kind of friend she is and how much she means to me. I can say that she is one of the greatest gifts of my entire life and that she is the best friend that I will ever have—an unimaginably special friend. She brings me immense comfort.
The third thing that brings me comfort is a hot bath. I love water and if I could swim in a warm gentle body of water frequently like I did when I lived in Barcelona, I would do that for comfort. In New York, I use my bathtub with lavender bubbles, a lavender candle, in quiet solitude.
Photo by Janelle Lynch from Another Way of Looking at Love: Wonder (2016)
Who are some lesser known artists you love?
The first artist who came to mind is the American watercolor painter, Charles Burchfield (1893-1967). While he has had major international recognition and there is the Burchfield Penney Arts Center in Buffalo, NY dedicated to his art and vision, he is still less recognized than his life and work merit. The traveling exhibition organized by the artist Robert Gober, Heat Waves in a Swamp: the Paintings of Charles Burchfield, made significant gains toward rightly positioning Burchfield as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. It opened in 2009 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and traveled to the Whitney in New York, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center in 2010.
I was introduced to his work in 2006 because of the deep reverential and spiritual connection to nature that we share. Since then, he has been among the most important influences on my own artistic practice.
Really lesser known artists that I love include, Elisa Jensen, a painter in Brooklyn; Fran O’Neill, a painter who now lives in Australia; and Kaitlin McDonough, an artist in New York. I met all three women at the New York Studio School when I was studying drawing and painting between 2015-2018. They are exceptional artists, thinkers, teachers, and human beings, and I am most grateful for what they taught me about seeing, color, light, art, teaching, art history, and kindness. I am also grateful to them for making the work that they do.
What is an act of kindness that was given to you that had a large impact on your life?
In March 2020, I was living alone in New York. My partner, Forrest, was in graduate school in Chicago. As COVID intensified, his parents suggested that he travel to Georgia to stay safely with them. They have a beautiful property called Fern Valley in a remote part of the Northeast Georgia Mountains. Forrest asked if he could bring me and, while they knew about our long relationship—our romantic relationship was new, and they had never met me before. They said “yes.” A week later, I was warmly and graciously welcomed into their home. It was an act of generosity unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life, including from my own family. Fern Valley was my safe haven during the pandemic. It was a creative refugee. I photographed there and created a new body of work and became part of a loving family.
Photo by Janelle Lynch from Another Way of Looking at Love: Summer Wreath (2016)
These are a few of my favorite things…
Book(s): Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which made an impact on how I relate to nature and photography; Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diaries, which was a catalyst for a change in my thinking about loss and a related shift in my photographic practice; Mary Oliver’s collection of poems, Blue Iris, which I read while I was making Another Way of Looking at Love and immersed me in a wondrous state of mind in which to photograph; Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and Our World Through Mindfulness, which I also read while making Another Way of Looking at Love— a book about personal healing that also made an impact on my work; Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is, I believe, the only book I've read twice. It substantiated and reinforced my belief in the existence of the unknown, unprovable and in the spiritual world, which is something that has guided my life and my work.
Album or Song(s): My favorite music is the sounds of nature. I also love silence.
Place(s): My favorite places are a home in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that I owned with my former partner from 2005-2018. It was a renovated hay barn on beautiful land and it was my private sanctuary. It’s where I made Another Way of Looking at Love.
I really love the corner of my bedroom in Manhattan with my lavender Womb Chair, a beautiful blue rug, a Tolomeo lamp, and a Saarinen side table. It’s next to a west-facing window, so gets nice afternoon light. I have a view of a honey locust and the sky. It’s where I read.
I really enjoyed living in Barcelona from 2007-2011. My maternal family is from Sicily and I feel very much at home in that part of Southern Europe. It has a tempo and a way of life that resonates with me. I loved having easy access to the sea and to the mountains and to great fruits and vegetables.
And I love being in my partner’s arms.
Movie(s): A favorite movie is Honeyland, a 2019 documentary about a beekeeper in North Macedonia. The use of light was so extraordinary and the cinematography was exquisite.