This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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About the PhotographerBrenda Ann Kenneally is a mother, teacher, multiplatform documentary worker, Guggenheim Fellow, and Pulitzer Prize nominee, with lived experience of incarceration in her youth. Over the past thirty years, Kenneally’s long-form, immersive projects have produced visceral portraits of the personal experiences of disadvantaged children in America, as well as a ground-up historic record of contemporary social and political values in the United States. Her 2018 book from Regan Arts, Upstate Girls: What Became of Collar City 2004–2013 is now sold out, and her exhibition of the same project, Upstate Girls to Grown Upstate: Unraveling Collar City 2004-23, showed at the Center for Photography at Woodstock from August 19-October 22, 2023. |
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Truth in Photography: What is particularly striking about your work with Upstate Girls is the interaction between you and the subjects. It is so evident in the images that you produced over that period of time and that you're still making. Talk about what made you want to make this level of commitment.
Brenda Kenneally: Well, that's my life. Literally, I am the original Upstate Girl. Most of it is in many ways about myself. The life that I had, the life that I sort of left, and then couldn't leave and went back to. If we talk about truth in photography or truth in anything, I believe the more that I reveal about myself, the more others will feel equitable in revealing their truth. It's not like I set out to do anything like that. I met a young girl who reminded me a lot of myself when I was her age, 14. She was pregnant and had a baby. I was pregnant at 14 and had an abortion. She was from Troy, the same place that I'm from. My father lived around the corner from her. I simultaneously made a lot of videos and pictures of him during that time. I literally would walk around the corner after I left the girl’s house.
Anyway, I just felt it was like walking back into my own childhood. Even the look of the rooms, the kids, the way they were eating cereal, watching cartoons, beating the crap out of each other as a way to show love and connect, it felt very familiar, and it felt like love to me. So I stayed for many reasons, but I never tried to stay there for 20 years. And in fact, maybe now I wish I didn’t, because I wanted to leave upstate New York. I never felt like I fit in, because I wanted to be an artist. And in many ways, I never did get to be an artist because I was committed to the lives of the folks who were in front of me. But through that, I became a journalist, became a documentary maker, and became a fuller human being. The next book that I'm doing after the second Upstate book is called Investigations of an Undercover Human Being, because I don't even define myself anymore as a journalist or documentary maker or anything that has a level of separation, because those are my people, and they became my family, and I saw all of their children born. And now some of those children are having children.
I feel like every policy and social construct that we've made that separates us from each other is evident in the lives of those folks, and in mine, too. It’s also very telling, the fact that I felt incredibly comfortable there. When I made the decision last year to end it, we went on a trip to the desert, and that was the end of the project in that formal photographic way. It's never the end of our relationships, right? I experienced almost two full years of mourning and loss, like a closure for which there is no template.
It's not like I set out to do a story. I've never done that with any photography I've ever done. There's some spark that I'm interested in in the other person. I can't get enough and they're my teacher for whatever period of time that we are together. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I don't see a separation as journalist, artist, person making pictures, because the pictures that I make are all about myself.
Brenda Kenneally: Well, that's my life. Literally, I am the original Upstate Girl. Most of it is in many ways about myself. The life that I had, the life that I sort of left, and then couldn't leave and went back to. If we talk about truth in photography or truth in anything, I believe the more that I reveal about myself, the more others will feel equitable in revealing their truth. It's not like I set out to do anything like that. I met a young girl who reminded me a lot of myself when I was her age, 14. She was pregnant and had a baby. I was pregnant at 14 and had an abortion. She was from Troy, the same place that I'm from. My father lived around the corner from her. I simultaneously made a lot of videos and pictures of him during that time. I literally would walk around the corner after I left the girl’s house.
Anyway, I just felt it was like walking back into my own childhood. Even the look of the rooms, the kids, the way they were eating cereal, watching cartoons, beating the crap out of each other as a way to show love and connect, it felt very familiar, and it felt like love to me. So I stayed for many reasons, but I never tried to stay there for 20 years. And in fact, maybe now I wish I didn’t, because I wanted to leave upstate New York. I never felt like I fit in, because I wanted to be an artist. And in many ways, I never did get to be an artist because I was committed to the lives of the folks who were in front of me. But through that, I became a journalist, became a documentary maker, and became a fuller human being. The next book that I'm doing after the second Upstate book is called Investigations of an Undercover Human Being, because I don't even define myself anymore as a journalist or documentary maker or anything that has a level of separation, because those are my people, and they became my family, and I saw all of their children born. And now some of those children are having children.
I feel like every policy and social construct that we've made that separates us from each other is evident in the lives of those folks, and in mine, too. It’s also very telling, the fact that I felt incredibly comfortable there. When I made the decision last year to end it, we went on a trip to the desert, and that was the end of the project in that formal photographic way. It's never the end of our relationships, right? I experienced almost two full years of mourning and loss, like a closure for which there is no template.
It's not like I set out to do a story. I've never done that with any photography I've ever done. There's some spark that I'm interested in in the other person. I can't get enough and they're my teacher for whatever period of time that we are together. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I don't see a separation as journalist, artist, person making pictures, because the pictures that I make are all about myself.
TiP: Your work has gotten a lot of recognition, and I admire that that's happened for you. But it also seems that making the work is the highest priority for you. It's interesting to me the kind of distinction you make between what you did then and what you're thinking now. The question as it relates to Truth in Photography is, what is more true, and what is truth? Clearly, it's a feeling. Does it really have a tangible presence? Probably not. Is it factual? To some extent.
Kenneally: The term now that's being thrown around, and honestly I think I felt that this was important since I was very young, and it was something that was counterintuitive to the post-industrial upstate New York ethos I was raised in, is this idea of authentic self. Any NPR kind of review of a book about this, and there are many, is that we feel at any given moment that we are our most authentic self. Of course, if you're the kind of person that thinks about what that is and cares about it, right? It's like those pictures of your hair in your school pictures. You probably thought that was your best you. And then the next year they were horrible. And ten years later they're even more horrible. And then you just never want to look at them again. I don't think that my idea of truth has changed, but I will say that the more that was revealed to me about myself, particularly the level of trauma that I experienced, that not only allowed me to stay deeply in an entire landscape of emotional trauma, but the fact that I normalized it and that's how I felt comfortable is striking, because I'm the canary in the coal mine, right? If I feel that way, how could I expect folks that are with me to feel any different? Because it is about the work. But for me, it's really not about the work. It's about the work doing something.
The kids have gotten into college, fancy private schools. Sadly, none have gone the distance because it's very uncomfortable to be in a fancy boarding school, even if it's free, because you don't feel like you belong there. So, I kind of narrowed down my goal at the end with this second book, which is, I wanted to very clearly change what the last picture could be. With the trip out West, we were able to bust out of the claustrophobic rooms and frames and literally open up our arms in space. And I felt that that was at once a metaphor for possibility, but a real step that could be taken, if folks want to, because I'm not about saying your life needs to be different, but clearly there was a message I got that my people wanted something different. This was a life changing thing, literally getting in nature and seeing a physical landscape that was uncluttered and unconstructed in a way that if you see that the systems of oppression and separation are constructs, you can also maybe see freedom as a construct, and you don't have to buy in. Because my goal from the beginning, if I did have a goal, was to engage folks that I was with into radical and analytical thinking about their own situation and not buying into the internalized marginalization that keeps them oppressed and sick and sad and working shitty jobs that are going to get them nowhere, making other people rich, and then they're dead. Honestly, that was how I thought when I was 12 years old. That's what got me here in this crazy graffitied room that I’m talking to you from now. The room located in a squat in the middle of a desert in a totally deconstructed, alternative way of living town. I believe this possibility and agency is what I wanted to share with my Upstate folks.
Kenneally: The term now that's being thrown around, and honestly I think I felt that this was important since I was very young, and it was something that was counterintuitive to the post-industrial upstate New York ethos I was raised in, is this idea of authentic self. Any NPR kind of review of a book about this, and there are many, is that we feel at any given moment that we are our most authentic self. Of course, if you're the kind of person that thinks about what that is and cares about it, right? It's like those pictures of your hair in your school pictures. You probably thought that was your best you. And then the next year they were horrible. And ten years later they're even more horrible. And then you just never want to look at them again. I don't think that my idea of truth has changed, but I will say that the more that was revealed to me about myself, particularly the level of trauma that I experienced, that not only allowed me to stay deeply in an entire landscape of emotional trauma, but the fact that I normalized it and that's how I felt comfortable is striking, because I'm the canary in the coal mine, right? If I feel that way, how could I expect folks that are with me to feel any different? Because it is about the work. But for me, it's really not about the work. It's about the work doing something.
The kids have gotten into college, fancy private schools. Sadly, none have gone the distance because it's very uncomfortable to be in a fancy boarding school, even if it's free, because you don't feel like you belong there. So, I kind of narrowed down my goal at the end with this second book, which is, I wanted to very clearly change what the last picture could be. With the trip out West, we were able to bust out of the claustrophobic rooms and frames and literally open up our arms in space. And I felt that that was at once a metaphor for possibility, but a real step that could be taken, if folks want to, because I'm not about saying your life needs to be different, but clearly there was a message I got that my people wanted something different. This was a life changing thing, literally getting in nature and seeing a physical landscape that was uncluttered and unconstructed in a way that if you see that the systems of oppression and separation are constructs, you can also maybe see freedom as a construct, and you don't have to buy in. Because my goal from the beginning, if I did have a goal, was to engage folks that I was with into radical and analytical thinking about their own situation and not buying into the internalized marginalization that keeps them oppressed and sick and sad and working shitty jobs that are going to get them nowhere, making other people rich, and then they're dead. Honestly, that was how I thought when I was 12 years old. That's what got me here in this crazy graffitied room that I’m talking to you from now. The room located in a squat in the middle of a desert in a totally deconstructed, alternative way of living town. I believe this possibility and agency is what I wanted to share with my Upstate folks.
This is probably crazy radical, and it's a little secret that I try to impart in small doses, because if you say that my work has gotten some recognition, honestly, I feel like that work has done nothing and it has been largely ignored by a venue that could do something to help me make some systems of lasting change for these kids. And that's the only really reason I'm talking to you. It's never been about these fancy art things. It's stuff nobody really wants to see. It's also not a story that is a problem with a solution. It is a condition of a system that's purposeful and ongoing. I mean to, at least in my small circle, talk to my people and kids the way I talk to my own kid, as a comrade in arms. I say that this system is out to steal your soul, to make a profit for them, to be aware, and these are the ways.
For the first book, I actually went and got historic images since the Industrial Revolution and did a timeline where you can clearly see with every incremental progress and capitalism how this affects those people's lives. Our lives. That's the real truth. And that's the thing that I don't say, because you won't get a journalism grant, you won't get any of these very limited systems of support to do this work. I come from a family of no generational wealth, nothing, like generational debt. And so there's no other way to do this work. But if you don't frame it in a way that a journalistic system or a documentary system can digest, you're not going to get that grant or fellowship. If I say I want to radicalize and help the folks who are participating with me to think analytically about the ways their lives have been co-opted by the capitalistic system, where am I going to get with that?
For the first book, I actually went and got historic images since the Industrial Revolution and did a timeline where you can clearly see with every incremental progress and capitalism how this affects those people's lives. Our lives. That's the real truth. And that's the thing that I don't say, because you won't get a journalism grant, you won't get any of these very limited systems of support to do this work. I come from a family of no generational wealth, nothing, like generational debt. And so there's no other way to do this work. But if you don't frame it in a way that a journalistic system or a documentary system can digest, you're not going to get that grant or fellowship. If I say I want to radicalize and help the folks who are participating with me to think analytically about the ways their lives have been co-opted by the capitalistic system, where am I going to get with that?
Uncle Bob’s Baby Moms, Amanda and their children in front of their bedroom quarters in front of one of the makeshift basement rooms in their generational homestead. These basement quarters have been invaluable resources during times of family transition, preventing generations of their extended family from becoming homeless or losing custody of their children because they could not provide stable housing. Social welfare agencies who made regular visits to the homestead knew they could not provide a better alternative and gave silent blessings when the case workers looked the other way in the face of these substandard conditions. Troy, New York, 2018. © Brenda Ann Kenneally
TiP: How does this affect the kinds of images that you make? How do you see the world differently? How do you frame it differently?
Kenneally: Context is huge. I use tons of writing because I don't want to decontextualize the photos. That's been a real problem in the past. I have social media accounts for one reason, so that I can use the kids’ pages and posts, with their permission of course, as part of the documentary process. It heavily figures into the second book because the influence of social media is actually a big character now. We started out before MySpace and people had beepers, and now it's TikTok. I don't use them. I do not decontextualize and post images or anything like that. I feel like that's a real problem, and that's why I did the museum, so people could actually come into the space and see the stuff in context. I think that's important and it's a responsibility. I don't decontextualize, I don't give the images away as single pieces. They're part of a body and part of a life. And words are a lot. And also the people that are in them, we've done scrapbooks and things that they say about them.
I think the social media for me is a large part. Not using Instagram anymore, definitely not Facebook anymore. I've never had a Twitter account, and I'll never do TikTok, I feel it’s evil and I forbid anybody to even do it in my home. And I think that weeds out a lot of moral problems and certainly protects my folks a little more. As much as possible, because they post stuff themselves. But it might cut off some art spaces that you might reach with those. But that's a commitment that I made. I call myself a conscientious objector. You still have to do the work, and you also have a commitment to the people that are working with you to get the work out. So it's a tricky dance, right? You should have it in a book. It should be totally contextualized. But in order to get it there, sometimes you have to decontextualize it a bit on the way.
Kenneally: Context is huge. I use tons of writing because I don't want to decontextualize the photos. That's been a real problem in the past. I have social media accounts for one reason, so that I can use the kids’ pages and posts, with their permission of course, as part of the documentary process. It heavily figures into the second book because the influence of social media is actually a big character now. We started out before MySpace and people had beepers, and now it's TikTok. I don't use them. I do not decontextualize and post images or anything like that. I feel like that's a real problem, and that's why I did the museum, so people could actually come into the space and see the stuff in context. I think that's important and it's a responsibility. I don't decontextualize, I don't give the images away as single pieces. They're part of a body and part of a life. And words are a lot. And also the people that are in them, we've done scrapbooks and things that they say about them.
I think the social media for me is a large part. Not using Instagram anymore, definitely not Facebook anymore. I've never had a Twitter account, and I'll never do TikTok, I feel it’s evil and I forbid anybody to even do it in my home. And I think that weeds out a lot of moral problems and certainly protects my folks a little more. As much as possible, because they post stuff themselves. But it might cut off some art spaces that you might reach with those. But that's a commitment that I made. I call myself a conscientious objector. You still have to do the work, and you also have a commitment to the people that are working with you to get the work out. So it's a tricky dance, right? You should have it in a book. It should be totally contextualized. But in order to get it there, sometimes you have to decontextualize it a bit on the way.
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