Interview: Michelle Rogers Pritzl - “Not Waving But Drowning”
It’s no surprise that there are a great many photographic artists working in the world today that employ the use of alternative or historical processes. Within that world, the rise of using wet plate collodion techniques has surged at an increasingly extraordinary rate, with artists practicing anywhere from a few decades to a few days. It’s becoming a crowded field, but occasionally the cream rises to the top, and we find an artist whose photographs are as personal and well-considered as they are stunningly beautiful in their appearance. And this is where we must consider the works of Michelle Rogers Pritzl.
While Pritzl has been a practicing artist and educator for many years, working on several projects with an identifiable aesthetic, we are highlighting her Not Waving But Drowning collection of deeply personal images that are unapologetic and honest and come from a place of past trauma. These autobiographical images also arrive from a beautiful darkness that is frequent in her past works. There is much to tie together from collection to collection as the years go by and the photographs are made. Having had the opportunity to witness her progression over the years, it became quite clear that diving in more with her thoughts and images would be of benefit to others. She is also an educator, so it comes with great interest how she approaches her work and continues with a passion for photography that is palpable with every image she creates. There is clearly more to come from Pritzl in the future, but now is an excellent time to discover more about her process and love of a medium that strikes us all. Please enjoy this thoughtful interview with Michelle Rogers Pritzl and take her photographic activities to heart as they deeply resonate in the hearts, minds, and souls of all who experience them.
INTERVIEW
Michael Kirchoff: Every photographer experiences that spark that drives them toward image-making. How did you get your start, and what were your early influences?
Michelle Rogers Pritzl: I took a photography class in high school, back in 1993, which was just me randomly choosing an elective, but I really fell in love with the darkroom, and it really became an obsession for me. I spent all my free time and all my time at school printing, and experimenting. While I was in high school I wasn’t able to use many historical processes outside of silver gelatin, but I was really influenced by early photography and historic processes. I wanted to make tintypes, even back then, and I was obsessed with early photographers and movements, Pictorialism, Henry Peach Robinson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Anna Atkins are a few.
MK: What is it that you get out of creating photographs? Is there an overriding theme in your work that best represents you as an artist?
MRP: I get a lot of joy out of the creative process. There is something deep inside of me that needs to express myself visually. I am better at telling a story or expressing myself through images than I am at speaking, and image-making has always been an important way to express myself. I think my work has been very diverse over the years, but there are a couple overriding themes that represent me and one of those is my love of unconventional, darker beauty, and the passage of time. I find beauty in melancholy, in things and places a lot of people don't. When I see an old abandoned house I don’t see something that should be torn down, I see a beautiful relic with clues inside to the lives that unfolded in past decades, traces of the people who lived and loved in that home. I love historic processes for the connection to the past and my own interest in Victorian times.
MK: What is it that inspires you to decide upon a particular project?
MRP: I think it’s a combination of where I find beauty, and whether I have something I feel is important to be said. Sometimes I start with a process, sometimes the concept it my starting point.
MK: In perusing many of the collections on your website, it seems that the use of film and historical processes is something that has been a foundation of all of these works. What led you to make photographs using these methods, and is there a favorite?
MRP: Probably initially it was my love of 19th century and Victorian everything. I was definitely fascinated with any and all processes from early photography, but once I got a chance to start working with them I found I really liked the handmade aspect of a lot of processes, the control I had over more aspects of my photographs, and the painterly feel of being able to make my own emulsions. My favorite is definitely wet collodion. I can still remember the first plate I made, that was a visible image, even though it was nothing special, the process itself was just intoxicating and I fell in love.
MK: You, as the artist, appear in many of your photographs and more than one collection. How does self-portraiture broaden the scope of these works? Is there a cathartic benefit that accompanies self-portraiture?
MRP: You know, I’m not sure if it really does broaden the scope of the work, it really wasn’t my intent in the beginning, it was just what I was much more comfortable with, than trying to find models for the images. It became a part of the work, and it made sense to continue that way because the last three series’ have been autobiographical and it felt right to be the person depicting my past in the photos as well as the person creating. I don’t feel like it’s as important that they are self-portraits.
MK: After touching upon the last few subject questions, this leads me to your most recent body of work, Not Waving But Drowning. Can you give us a little insight into this collection? Also, is this an ongoing body of work?
MRP: This series was a natural conclusion to the work I was doing in graduate school. As I was finishing up grappling with being raised Southern Baptist, I was beginning to understand was religious abuse, and not a normal way to grow up, I was finally ready to admit how unhappily married I was, and I left my first husband after I graduated. That experience and the fallout that I survived made me sure I had to tell the story of what it was like to be unhappily married in the confines of Evangelical Christianity, the way I had been silenced, the way I was treated after I left. Not Waving But Drowning was my way of telling the whole world what I went through. It was especially important to create, because so many people I had called my friends refused to listen to me and didn’t want to know what I had gone through. I found so many people didn’t want to know more after hearing I’d left my ex, I was wrong for leaving, and that was the end of it, so putting my story out into the world anyway was not only something very important to me, it was very cathartic too. This is definitely a completed body of work, but the larger themes of control and religion, especially now in a post Roe vs. Wade society are definitely not finished. I have a lot more to say about the urgency of this time in America, I thought I was finished, but now that religion is behind the erosion of rights for all women not just ones in religious communities, that idea is not finished, not by a long shot.
MK: One other thing I love about Not Waving But Drowning is the presentation and use of the oval images. Is there a specific reason behind this? What about any challenges to making work in this form?
MRP: The oval images were an intuitive choice that felt right for what the series is, a window into what my life was like back then. I wouldn’t call it challenging but I did find myself having to change compositions once I had cropped them, the oval was definitely something to get used to.
MK: Do you study what others are doing, and do you find their influence in your image-making?
MRP: I do! I look at other people’s photography all time time! I love finding new work or seeing a process that inspires me. Of course it’s in my work, sometimes inspiring me to something new or to think a different way about how I work, or just an images that sparked an idea for something in my own work. I go back to 19th century image makers a lot, probably more than anything else.
MK: Do you have any other creative pursuits, or has photography become the one obsession that always takes precedence?
MRP: I do have other creative pursuits. During lockdown I had the opportunity to become involved in a series of social justice murals with my students and that has actually become something that I have spent a lot of time on and am continuing to work on with students. My husband and I have a farm, and we raise sheep and alpacas, and I have been starting to work with fiber arts and learning to spin my own wool. The farm and mural work have become a big part of my creative process these last few years. I also enjoy portraiture, and one of the murals I created during the lockdown was something that pushed my drawing skills much further. I really enjoy making graphite portraits.
MK: Concerning creativity and the projects you take on. Do you feel it is better to create work that fits a particular style for yourself, branch out and try new things, or better to leave yourself open to possibilities that happen organically?
MRP: I think I probably work more organically and see where my ideas and experiments take me, most of the time. Although, once I got comfortable working in a certain style with the collodion self-portraits, it really made sense to keep working in a similar style, as those three series’ were very entangled with each other. I’ve worked that way for so many years though, I feel like I am back to experimenting and trying new things. I definitely am always open to new discoveries of a process, or a different way of working. I think I experiment until I find something that really resonates with me and then create the work around it.
MK: How do you know if you're ever really done with a specific body of work? Do you ever go back to revisit images or collections to improve upon what you felt was previously finished?
MRP: I think there’s actually only a few series that I have fully finished, Soma, Those Whose Hands and Hearts are Pure and Not Waving But Drowning. I worked differently with those, and spent a lot of time sketching, storyboarding and editing the images in my sketchbook, before I ever started shooting the work. Those series are finished. It’s still a very intuitive process to feel “done”. The rest of my work is probably all still a work in progress, and an experiment in process.
MK: Tell me about your role as an educator. Is this a key component of your life and creative process as an artist?
MRP: It’s a huge part of my life although probably not as much a part of my personal creative process. I’ve been teaching for about 15 years now, a variety of ages and classes from kindergarten through college, and photography, as well as other types of visual arts. I knew a long time ago that in terms of making a living from photography, teaching was the thing I actually enjoyed the most, and I really have loved working with K-12 kids. It’s so wonderful to watch budding artists develop, and even more wonderful to see what they do after they graduate and become working artists. I have some former students doing spectacular things and I’m just so proud of who they turned out to be. I love teaching.
MK: I noticed that you show some of your past students' work on your website. It's very telling that you would do such a thing as give exposure to the accomplishments of others. Any thoughts on this?
MRP: A lot of the work I put on my website was done by high school students. And I both wanted to share their work and also showcase what kids can produce if taught the skills and given the experiences to do extraordinary things. I have found some people to be quite condescending over the years that I teach K-12, and not college, and I honestly want people to see what amazing work those kids can create. As well as wanting to promote my kids as they go out into the world making new work. They're amazing and I want to share their stuff! Who wouldn’t?
MK: Alright, Michelle, thank you so much for your time and effort with this interview–one final question. What is next for you? Will there be any new or expanded works we'll have a chance to experience in the not-too-distant future?
MRP: I am working on a series about life after Not Waving But Drowning. I loved for so long trying to follow all the “rules” I was supposed to for fear of a god figure who would be angry at me for my sins. I broke every rule I was taught was important and yet no one ever shot me down with flaming arrows from heaven and I feel like it’s really important to create work that acknowledges that all the blessings I found in my life came from taking my life in my own hands and going after what I wanted the way I wanted, not the way I was told was right. It’s so amazing, still, to feel comfortable in my own skin, and know that I get to be my authentic self and not the repressed version, and know that what’s right for me is right. I’m hoping to share some of that work in the next year as I get more completed.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Michelle Rogers Pritzl was born in the Washington DC area where she was raised Southern Baptist. She fell in love with photography in a high school darkroom and has been making images ever since. Pritzl received a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2001, a MA in Art Education from California State University in 2010, and a MFA in Photography from Lesley University College of Art, where she studied with Christopher James, in 2014. Her work explores the tension between past and present in our psychological lives as well as the photographic medium itself, often working in a digital/analogue hybrid and using historic alternative processes.
Pritzl has been widely exhibited in New York, New Orleans, Fort Collins, Boston and Washington DC, as well as internationally. She was a Critical Mass Top 200 finalist in 2013, 2014, and 2017 and was in the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2018. She has been featured in Lenscratch, Fraction Magazine, Diffusion Magazine, Lumen Magazine, Shots Magazine, Your Daily Photograph via the Duncan Miller Gallery, amongst others.
Pritzl has taught photography and drawing in both high school and college for the last 15 years, including as an adjunct instructor at Lesley University College of Art, and leading workshops at the Griffin Museum of Photography and Vermont Center for Photography. She lives on a farm in the Finger Lakes with her husband John and their son.
Connect with Michelle Rogers Pritzl on her Website and Instagram!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Kirchoff is a photographic artist, independent curator and juror, and advocate for the photographic arts. He has been a juror for Photolucida’s Critical Mass, and has reviewed portfolios for several fine art photographic organizations and non-profits in the U.S. and abroad. Michael has been a contributing writer for Lenscratch, Light Leaked, and Don’t Take Pictures magazine. In addition, he spent ten years (2006-2016) on the Board of the American Photographic Artists in Los Angeles (APA/LA), producing artist lectures, as well as business and inspirational events for the community. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief at Analog Forever Magazine, Founding Editor for the photographer interview site, Catalyst: Interviews, Contributing Editor at One Twelve Publishing, and the Co-Host of The Diffusion Tapes podcast.