DVAA Member since 2021

Sara Allen

website:

About:

Sara Allen took snapshots over the years but left serious photography to others who were “real” artists. Several years after the death of her husband and retirement from teaching English literature to middle schoolers she began to explore the possibility of creating images with a sense of purpose. Moving from a point-and-shoot camera ten years ago, she began the long process of becoming a photographer who can go beyond class assignments to understand not only her digital camera and software but the nature of the medium itself. All the elements of photography were new: instead of thinking only of the object in her viewfinder, she began to think about the elements contained within a frame that are capturing a moment in time and space - the aesthetics of photography. She continues to learn to see in new ways and to explore the endless ways of expressing her insights in her art.

Artist Statement:

“In 2014 I photographed Eiko Otake performing in the great hall at 30th Street Station. In a yellow kimono-like garment, she moved slowly and with great expression through her public, unscripted performance. Something about the sadness in her face, the inwardness of the dance, and the beauty of her body moving so slowly in space struck a chord in me. In 2020, I began taking photographs expressing the same kind of inwardness I had seen in Eiko’s movements. I sought to capture something profound about the experience of being a 78 year old woman living alone during a national quarantine far from children and grandchildren. I turned the camera on myself and moved into black and white to explore not only the aloneness of the forced withdrawal of this time but also the experience of growing old. This is a coherent body of work ready for an exhibition.

Over nearly a year, I created and shot a variety of scenarios to communicate the feelings arising from the crisis of the pandemic. First were the feeling of isolation and emptiness from the loss of physical contact with my children, grandchildren, friends and neighbors. Second was the anxiety of the time of extraordinary illness, death, and political turmoil, leading to a conscious withdrawal from the world and a search for a place of calm and solace. Third were the vulnerabilities I experience as a woman who lives alone distant from family. I love living alone and creating my own life as I grow old, but there is no one to calm the fears, fill the emptiness at dinner, or be with me when the loneliness sets in.

At first I tried cutting out family photos and arranging them on a table with a place setting suggesting eating alone. Or I created scenes of my daily FaceTime reading with my granddaughter as I sat alone at my computer. The photographs spoke to me of love and loss, but they did not reach outside themselves to viewers. Only when I turned the camera on my face when in actual despair over my struggles as a photographer did I find a way to begin to express in photographs what I felt. The breakthrough photograph, taken on an iPad, I couldn’t use because it was poorly focused, but it led me to take the leap into self-portraiture. The most terrifying moment was the one I brought these revealing photos of myself to my online class. I was stunned by their enthusiasm and support of my new direction. Their critical responses have been essential to the success of this project.

Since the virus essentially limited us to our homes, I turned the home into my studio and sought to create situations in which gesture, light, and composition communicated not only that feeling of isolation but also the human experience of solitude that goes beyond the confinement of this pandemic. In an odd way my expressions of solitude became a kind of connection between my self and myself, and myself and the world that changed me as a photographer and an older woman dealing with the issues of aging while also seeking to grow and learn. Through the process I uncovered strengths I did not realize I had and could reveal.”