Q&A: Will Harris

By Zora J Murff | May 1, 2020

Will Harris (b. 1990) is an emerging visual artist whose work deals with memory, history, time, and place. He mostly uses photography as his medium but he also utilizes audio both found and recorded. Will holds his BFA in Photography from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA and completed his MFA in Photography and Integrated Media at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA in 2019.

Zora J Murff: What were your earliest experiences with photography?

Will Harris: I would have to say that my earliest experiences of photography would be messing around with my parent’s 35mm cameras. They were both amateur photographers and eventually let me put the film in the cameras to take some images. That led to them buying my first digital camera at about 16.

ZJM: When did you know that you wanted to be an artist?

WH: That happened around my freshman year of undergrad. This reality coincided with getting past the technical difficulties of photo one class and then I really began to see all the possibilities of the medium. During my undergrad, the use of large-format cameras became important to my work.

ZJM: In our conversation, you talked about being a freshman and learning about the punctum…What is an early image with a punctum that stands out in your mind? Do you still think this image is influential for you?

An image that I would have been looking at during this time who’s punctum still stands out to me now is from Boogie’s series It’s all good. There is an image in that series with a man who has a glass eye in his hand and his child on his lap. The glass eye is removed and the child is putting their finger in the empty cavity, and the man is holding the glass eye in hand in the foreground (his hand is out of focus). For me, this image said and still says so much. After one gets passed the possible gruesomeness of the image you can realise that the image speaks volumes.

ZJM: I’m thinking about your reading of Boogie’s photograph in today’s context, and considering how our readings of the image can shift over time. But I feel that the vulnerability of that moment is where the potential of the image is. How do you grapple with that in your own work?

WH: On the surface level, perhaps my work does not seem too vulnerable. There are not many people in my photos after all. But, I would say that the subject matter itself is very vulnerable - it is something very close to me and it has not been easy for me to dig into and talk about. I took care to be as honest as possible while still trying to ensure that I was not taking advantage of my nana’s dementia if that makes sense. Prior to her dementia totally taking control, I felt like she was an active participant in my work. But in the end, it sometimes felt inappropriate to photograph her and I chose to just spend time being fully present with her instead. I do share some very vulnerable moments in the audio pieces for sure - some more immediately obvious than others. I also do have other photographs that I have taken, that at this time, at least, are just for me. It was a huge struggle, being away in graduate school for the last year and a half of her life, and when I was present during that time, how much to document. One of my key photos of this series is a long exposure of my nana sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast. This was the last time that she came to the table under her own power and the length of the exposure was determined by the amount of time it took her to finish her meal. She left our family home to go to the hospital shortly after that and then passed away a few months later.

ZJM: Following your undergrad, you decided to take some time off from school. What was that time like for you? How do you think it was necessary or transformative?

WH: I think it was really helpful and necessary for me. After graduating from undergrad, I felt like I was done with photography at that point in time. The four and a half years between undergrad and graduate school allowed me to apply the creative thinking skills that I learned in school to the world outside of art. I ultimately think that is what led me back to wanting to create things again. During this time I worked for a home staging company which was so tangential compared to the way that I was used to being creative. I also assisted a photographer at the time. After some time, being in both of those environments of assisting and staging really had me longing to continue to make things of my own.

ZJM: What brought you back into making?

WH: In February of 2015, I took part in a residency in Finland. During my time there I made landscape images and also made sound pieces to accompany the images as well. The use of sound came out of one of the frustrations that I had in undergrad; I wanted photography to do more and audio became a tool to open up more possibilities for me. The time in Finland allowed me to experiment with sound and photos in a non-traditional way. That experimentation eventually led to the sound collages that I made for Evelyn Beckett as part of my graduate school thesis project.

ZJM: I like that term “sound collage”. Can you expand on that a bit?

WH: I use the term “sound collage” and think about it just like I would visual collage. It is a composite piece of specifically curated found and created audio that is strung together in a very intentional way. In my most recent project, the audio and images go hand-in-hand; they inform each other and enhance one another, but they can also be experienced separately. There are references to the images in audio and vice versa so viewing the work together can take the experience to another level I think. For me, the sound collage went somewhere that pictures couldn’t go and they mimic dementia that was going on in my Nana’s mind that I was trying to portray. I chose to make sound collages because I wanted something that felt random but also felt calculated at times, much like the experience of watching someone going through dementia (to hear Will’s sound collages, please visit his website).

ZJM: How do you think the incorporation of sound changed your imagery or your practice as an image-maker?

WH: The sound allowed new possibilities for the images. It allowed me to be more aloof with imagery. It allowed me to become comfortable combining things that I normally wouldn’t in the series. Such as digital manipulations, and archival imagery with analog photography.

ZJM: Can you expand on what you mean by being ‘more aloof’ with your imagery? I don’ think I have ever heard of anyone talking about aloofness in their practice.

WH: Yeah, the “aloofness” that I refer to is the detachment from reality that I was trying to mimic, that is present in the audio. The inspiration for the detachment came from the distant, cold, and aloof personality that was now present in my Nana. I don’t know words can explain what it feels like not to be recognized by some that you’ve been so close to your entire life, I don’t know that I could make a single image that says that, but the “aloofness” of the series did that for me I was able to share that eerieness that became a day to day reality. My family and I would watch my Nana slip in and our reality and the reality of her dementia. While she was still very familiar, she was also distant and not always forthcoming. I tried to make my imagery and sequencing matching this feeling.

ZJM: I appreciate that sound highlights time in your work and looking through your site, I can’t help but want to make Evelyn and Evelyn Beckett one larger body of work. That impulse comes from your play with time conceptually.

WH: The series Evelyn was made as my senior thesis project in undergrad, Evelyn Beckett was part of Thesis for grad school. Evelyn Beckett definitely grew out of Evelyn. I am making some of the same types of images in later work but I would have to say that Evelyn is just about my nana’s home and Evelyn Beckett is more about the landscape of her life and how dementia affected her memory and how that, in turn, affected the rest of the family as well as me personally. We were unable to access information from her about the past and our history. So much was lost along with her memory. Time in Evelyn is about how the world has moved on outside but everything in the uninhabited house remained the same. Time in Evelyn Beckett is more spectral. Images reference things in the present, past, and future - time becomes confused just like my nana’s mind.

ZJM: Another concept that you brought up was Hauntology. Can you talk more about the phenomena, and how you relate it to your work?

WH: Hauntology, specifically the writing of Mark Fisher, is a concept that played a big role in my thesis. Simply put, hauntology refers to how elements of our past actions affect our present, and future. It also explores the idea of lost futures. My nana was very much a ghost of who she once was. The present and the past were often colliding in her mind, sliding back and forth. People and moments from her life would come and then disappear like ghosts. At the same time that she was dealing with this internal battle, the rest of the family was dealing with the knowledge of her impending passing. We were haunted by her past and her future.

I think the concept of hauntology can be applied more widely to photographic practices. A lot of the artwork that I look at is informed by the past, whether that be a cultural past or personal one. But, the reading of this type of work changes over time. So five or fifty years down the road, I wonder will people have different interpretations of my own work based on their past or what's going on in their present (personally or culturally). Everything is fluid.

ZJM: And it’s in that fluidity that I can begin to navigate all of your work in cumulatively way. It all folds in rather neatly, and I’m excited to see where it goes. You mentioned that you have been working on a book, any shareable details?

WH: Wrapping up this project and having it realised in book form and just continuing to make work. I think this work is most successful in book form. I hand made a book of this work for my MFA thesis and it was very well received by my jury. I would very much like to perfect this maquette and get it out into the world. I am currently in the very conversations with a publisher and am excited to see where this all goes!