© Rebecca Norris Webb, Corn, 2017. From the series 'Night Calls' 

Sifting through the pages of Rebecca Norris Web's online exhibition at the Robert Koch Gallery, I came across a quote from her that fascinated me. We read that after having studied English at the University of South Dakota, she faced writer's block. A kind of creative cataract. A fog that prevents you from fully perceive your imagination. The outlines of things lose their meaning, absence of references, we are in the middle of a pacific ocean, the waters are flat, and there is no breeze.

Sometimes it happens to measure yourself with this type of foundation that suddenly disappears from under your feet. More emptiness than silence. After all, what is creativity, if not an urgent need to express oneself? A solid drive that often comes from a family, intimate environment. Unconscious as Freud would have said. It is a life instinct, not to be confused with art! Still, the twentieth century is the one that most misunderstood from this point of view. It is no coincidence that today we hardly find two people with the same definition of art. It got lost in the very moment it became pure expressiveness, gesture. Yet, regardless of its definitions, what would be art without Van Gogh?

© Vincent Van Gogh, Wheat Field Under Clouded Sky. Oil on canvas, 1890 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)

© Rebecca Norris Webb, Storm Light, 2005. From the series 'My Dakota' 

Now back to the American author who tells how she decided to tackle her block with a camera and set out on the road. The rest is history, that of Webb, which deserves more to be seen than reading. How can I blame her for this? After all, we are nomads of thought. We have evolved like this. With the "Night Calls" series, it's the road again. This time the motivation comes from Eugene Smith's "Country Doctor" series. We read on the statement of the show « his famous Life Magazine photo essay. Webb was immediately drawn to the subject of Smith's essay, Dr. Ernest Ceriani, a Colorado country doctor who was just a few years older than her father. She wondered: How would a woman tell this story, especially if she happened to be the doctor's daughter? In light of this, for the past six years, Norris Webb has retraced the route of her 99-year-old father's house calls through Rush County, Indiana, the rural county where they both were born.» Crossing the vast rural plain of Indiana. I can only think about that, enough for a reason.

© Rebecca Norris Webb, Cloud, 2014. From the series 'Night Calls' 

What I like about her photography is precisely this poetic tension able to grab my attention. A suspension that resets everything. I wonder what fascinates me? Is it perhaps inspiration in making the banal precious? I think of her photo of corn. And Van Gogh's come to mind again. His story, especially the relationship with the brother, throughout difficulties. In My Dakota Webb reflects on the premature death of her brother too. And what about those sunflowers. Something elusive that reminds us of the Dutch painter's sunflowers that had well caught the attention of Paul Gaugain. I also reflect on his mental instability imprinted in his gaze even before in his forms. And those brushstrokes as intense as they are approximate. That not being able to do anything but identify with the scene. 

© Rebecca Norris Webb, Blackbirds, 2006. From the series 'My Dakota' 

© Vincent van Gogh, Four sunflowers gone to seed, August -October 1887. Kröller-Müller Museum (Permanent collection)

And this is what I find in these photographs: absolute simplicity. Not in all of course. For heaven's sake, not all poems have the same weight. They should be read differently, and so are the images, especially if they are considered as a plot of a novel, as a whole. On the other hand, I believe Webb is still willing to write somehow. What a pity, then, to line them up as if they were a platoon of terraced houses. Her photograph 'Corn' (see on the top) seems a dream discarded of its shell, a gray, decadent field, but there is no miracle without it—the contrast; life and death. Everything is played there. A bit like that swan returned in a warm cathartic light that sinks its neck in pitch darkness.

© Rebecca Norris Webb, Brooklyn, NY, 2017. From the series 'Slant Rhymes'

Or as a portrait of an impenetrable face reflected, through the window (or a rearview mirror when it is a self-portrait), in the landscape. Can we exist without a context? I see a lot of beauty here. Difficult to translate, especially in words. Ah, writer's block!

© Rebecca Norris Webb, New Mother Brienna, Corn Hill, 2013. From the series 'Memory City'

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LINKS

Robert Koch Gallery
Rebecca Norris Webb