Behind the lens: Virginia Woods-Jack
For artist Virginia Woods-Jack, her work doesn’t begin and end with the camera. Instead, it’s simply the source material – used for communicating and inspiring.
When did you first pick up a camera? When did you find this passion?
My grandfather taught me how to use the camera when I was about 12 years old back in England. He was an amazing painter and photographer – not professional, but very, very passionate about his writing, his painting and his photography. His photography was mainly based around documenting the people that he loved. So, that was my first experience with photography – being taught by my grandfather who had a deep love for the medium because it allowed him to record his family.
And did you just continue on from there with camera in hand?
Yes, I’ve always had a camera with me. My parents had a children's bookshop in the Lake District, and we lived above it. And so after my grandfather had introduced me to photography, I was really keen to continue so I worked for my parents to earn money to buy my first camera.
It was something I really wanted to do for myself. I had a 35mm SLR, but I also had a little 110 camera where I would take little snaps of me and my friends. I just always had a camera with me, but it wasn't really until I went to my foundation course and I went into a dark room that I was just hooked. I've always been involved within the medium within the arts, my whole working career.
“It was exciting and it definitely was a real challenge finding how I would create a new response to this place.”
Do you still play around in the darkroom at all?
I still do a lot of analog. I think of myself more as an artist who uses photography as my medium. Because I shoot a lot of analog and I'm very tactile with the material – the photograph is the source material, it's not the end. It doesn't start and end when I take the photograph, it goes through a whole series of experiments. How am I going to convey the initial research or emotion behind the work in the final presentation? The final work will always end up either being exhibited or in a book form, but it's always a means of further expressing the concept behind the whole work.
What was it like when you moved to New Zealand, capturing your new environment?
I recently did an online workshop and where was somebody who had recently moved within the States, from Kentucky to Texas. He was talking about how he felt so disorientated because he didn't know how to work in Texas, how to create images. And it sort of reminded me of when I first arrived in New Zealand with a newborn baby.
I got off the plane and I was just shocked at how crisp and clear the light was. There wasn't any kind of haze, whereas I was used to the sort of hazy, softer light of the northern hemisphere. It just felt really crystal clear with extremes between the light and the shadow.
I felt like I had to completely relearn and respond in a completely different way. Even though it was a medium that I've been working with for so long. It was exciting and it definitely was a real challenge finding how I would create a new response to this place.
“A work in progress, this is an ongoing exploration into perception and our connection to the natural world via the dream-like states of dusk and darkness. Here, the edges of our bodies blur in the twilight and the sense of space expands, as do we into it,” says Virginia of her Coming Home in the Dark series.
Your work aims to capture our connection with the natural environment and highlight the importance of caring for it. Can you tell me a bit more about this? Do you gravitate towards photographing certain aspects of our environment at all?
Water is a huge part of my practice. For the last few years I have been interested in how water is an archive for memory, for feelings and for history. There's all of this stuff enclosed within water, particularly within the sea.
Everything that ends up in the sea is a reflection of something. The pollution and every bit of micro plastic is a reflection of how we're not caring for the environment in the way that we should. I've got an ongoing project which is all about what I find on beach walks. Each of the things that I find is a remnant of an experience – be it fishing or time spent on the beach with your family or having a picnic, or maybe it's washed down from a river and, and then it's about mismanagement of land. There's all of these different aspects. But a lot of the time, it's about asking us to just slow down and take a bit more notice of how we're interacting.
We are so interconnected that we have to start thinking about how the way that we treat the land and the way that we treat the water, is a reflection of how we treat ourselves. We need to feel a stronger connection because if you feel very connected to something, then you're more likely to care for it.
Virginia’s Intertwined Stories series forms part of an ongoing exploration of water as an archive for desire and history, memory, feeling and ecological trauma. “Employing both camera-less and photographic techniques, Intertwined Stories explores the tension between the surface beauty of the ocean and the plastic pollution beneath the surface,” she says.
“I think somebody's work is worth championing, then why wouldn't you?”
You're also the founder and curator of Women in Photography, New Zealand and Australia. How did this come about?
Well, I'm not from this part of the world and I was seeing everything that was going on overseas – festivals and these amazing platforms online. And I was also talking lots to people overseas about what was going on in this part of the world. I'm always about championing the work of others – not necessarily just photographic artists, but just in general, if I think somebody's work is worth championing, then why wouldn't you? I see that it's not a case of keeping everything close to your chest, it's that if we make a better situation for everybody, then we all rise up.
I really wanted to create an archive for this part of the world so that curators, writers, and other artists can come and actually get a really good sense of what's happening here. It's not just a portfolio of people just showing their work and putting an abstract comment up, it's them actually talking about why they make the work – what drives them. I want it to be very conversational.
What has your experience in selling your work been like in New Zealand and how does the introduction of Artfull play into this?
I predominately sell direct myself – I’ve got really good relationships with my collectors. I also sell overseas as well.
The impetus behind the work isn't commercial. But you know, I'm a mum of two teenage children and this is what I do, so I have to make a living from it. I've spent a lot of time building up my collector base, but I also know that I'm at that juncture where I need my work to be seen by a broader audience. I still need my work to be seen and discussed when I need to take a break.
Artfull feels like there is some real intention behind it and a curation, as well.
“I've never tired of it and I think that's why I'm constantly pushing my experience of the medium.”
What do you love most about what you do?
I've never tired of it and I think that's why I'm constantly pushing my experience of the medium. It gives me a way of engaging with people and having conversations with people through my work that I really enjoy. And I enjoy the conversations when people say they don't like my work. People don't have to like it – you can't expect that everybody's going to like it. But it's really interesting hearing how people engage with the work and what they see in it, or what they don't see in it. My hope is always that I leave enough space within the work for somebody to have their own relationship with it.
I have my relationship with the creation of the work and the journey that I go on with each piece, which isn't fast – I'm not a prolific maker. There's a lot of time and thinking and research, but I suppose it expands my understanding of how I can visualise what it is that I'm actually concerned with, or thinking about or reading about. I feel like it's a real privilege to be able to do what I do.
New Zealand
