Love Undone
The Photography of Leah Michaelson
An Interview with Harvey Redding

An except from an interview with Leah Michaelson by Harvey Redding at the LLGAF OutArt Salon—Love Unravels, March 29, 2005 .

Harvey Redding (HR):Three months ago when you sent work in for the Marry Me exhibition, we were riveted and scurried very quickly to show your work in this March-April exhibition.

Looking over your bio, my first question is about the influence of your grandmother, her vintage collection photographs of the family, and the 1920s camera, she gave you?

Leah Michaelson (LM): I don’t think in any way that she knew she was bringing me to photography. But she had an amazing collection of family photographs that were always available for me to look through. They were favorite not precious things. And it’s not just vintage pictures I love, from the time I was very young I have loved to look at anybody’s family photographs. But my grandmother’s collections was the first one that I really did dwell on constantly. Whenever I wanted I would just open up the cover and paw through it.

HR: Paw through. Sounds pretty good. Now what about the camera she bought you when you were very young.
LM: She had many items that were passed on to the family. The camera was one of the many items I received from her that still has meaning for me. I just had it in my room, I don’t think any of us could have figured out how she put film in it.

HR: So when did you actually start taking pictures and when did you get your first camera?
LM: I didn’t start photographing until I was in high school. I went to a all girls Catholic Prep school outside of Detroit and we had a really good arts program at my school. But my school only offered one photo class in senior year, first semester, that was it. So I signed up and immediately loved it. I can still remember the first day that we went into the dark room. The darkroom was very small, and they divided our class in two, I was in the second group. My friend went in first and when she came out she said,“It’s just like a womb.”

Immediately I loved it and I hated it. I was kind of obsessive right away. I would just be in there for hours trying to figure out—I didn’t know what. We had very little direction actually and when the semester ended I convinced the teacher to give me the darkroom key so I could go in and play. He gave me all the paper and chemicals I needed and I just spent most of the next semester in there.
HR: You said you got engrossed in “alternative processing.”
LM: What you see in this exhibition are silver gelatin prints using a premade paper that already has all the chemicals and everything right in there and it’s using silver particles that then create the image. But there are a variety of other ways to make images, some very old going back to the early photography which don’t need a darkroom. That was what I became interested in. But I think because I didn’t go to school for it, I just pretty much looked at what I liked and tried to make what I like, and didn’t really know other than through experiment how to get to what I liked.

HR: And then later you went to Kate Millet’s art colony?
LM: Some of the pictures I’m showing actually actually were taken while I was at Kate’s colony. Kate, years ago bought a piece of land near Poughkeepsie that she got with the money from publishing Sexual Politics. She had this vision of a women’s art colony where women would be able to come and make work. She invited women, not artist necessarily in the beginning, but people interested in building an art colony to come up and building buildings. Kate decided that she did not want it to be a non-profit, she wanted the colony to support itself. So they planted Christmas trees, thinking that would be an easy way to make money. It turns out making a Christmas tree into a Christmas tree is much more work than it seems. Every artist at the colony woke up at 6 and worked several hours on the trees, everyday. That makes it different from any other art colonies when you’re not isolated from people.We worked together, ate together, in the evening we’d work, then whatever, lots of wine. She actually just recently sold most of the land, but she still owns the three houses that are clustered on one little peak.

HR: So what about the politics? Did Kate and the colony have a direct influence in your work?
LM: Well that certainly is why I was drawn to the colony, the feminism and the community of female artists. And I really wanted to trim some Christmas trees, the physical part of it. And definitely because of the history of it and who Kate was, I wanted to be part of what she had made. We would see something else that somebody carved into the woodwork or rafter, there’s a history there. I don’t think the other artists were drawn there for that same reasons as I.
HR: Did you start producing more feminist images by being in that environment?
LM: Not more feminist, my work was always informed by feminism and my feminist awareness; my work wasn’t affected in that way. I think it was kind of wonderful to be in that supportive place. I learned about generational ideas of art and art making and kind of what was available to me in the art world compared to what I had been exposed to.

HR: About the work itself, is the series a documentation of a breakup or loosely a story about this lady couple or images that have happened and you caught?
LM: The series is not a narrative of a breakup. I think the title Love Undone implies that. I was definitely unsatisfied and going through a breakup, but I don’t think that’s what the images are about. I think it’s hard because I don’t think of my work as necessarily a direct mirror. I expect other things to be read into them.In a photo you are undoing a moment or a thing or a feeling or something that is happening, so it’s sort of a process of taking those bits, taking all these things that are going on and happening and by putting so much into them that they makes sense.