“Out of resentment and desperation I picked up my camera.”
Photographer, writer and professional ballerina Sara Weir on transformation
Last spring Sara and I sat down for an in-depth member interview for Multiverse: The MEMORY CULT Podcast (enroll here for access). Today we follow up with that conversation as Sara explores showing the works in exhibition, creating her first monograph and what it could look like to photograph others with the same sensitivity she shows her family and herself.
Anastasia Pagonas: Thank you for spending time with me today. How are you?
Sara Weir: Thank you! I am well. Cycling through normal life things which feels at once beautiful and monotonous.
AP: I love your work and am curious about so many things. How was art and creativity viewed in your family of origin?
SW: It held and still holds high value especially on my mother's side. My grandfather collected beautiful editions of classic literature which I thumbed through at every family get together. I grew up discussing said books with my aunts and uncles who were very well read. My grandmother was the only person I knew to have a real commissioned portrait hanging in her home. On vacations we visited museums and discussed famous artists as well as history and politics.
They nourished my curiosities with their interest as well as books and beautiful treasures. My dad's side of the family is perhaps more practical, but only on the surface. My grandmother has written a poem for each of her grandchildren. She and I also discuss books and beauty regularly. My own parents, especially my dad, supported me financially through my ballet training. He was the one who, as a little girl, talked me into continuing my lessons. I wasn't allowed to have a job in high school so I could continue my training. Even in college he encouraged me to keep dancing. Very grateful for their support.
Painting from Thin Lips, Sara’s essay on shared family traits
AP: What’s something your parents did well that you carry into your practice today?
SW: My mother never shied from difficult conversations. She was more open about her own feelings than most parents growing up. I appreciated that as I got older. I didn't feel so shocked when hard feelings surfaced, I knew they were part of adulthood. I always felt she told me the truth. If she couldn't tell me the truth then she would tell me she couldn't tell me. Or that it was too difficult to talk about. I hope I am as honest with my children and in my work.
It really is a family affair. Together we master new combinations, sweat, and cheer each other along. All with Edna as our witness.
AP: You have five children and dance for Sierra Nevada Ballet. Tell us what a typical day for you looks like in this season.
SW: Ah, well this changes depending on the season! If we're starting a new SNB show it will feel slower and as the show gets closer things speed up! But typically during the school year we have school getting ready. The children are divided up between three schools at the moment, elementary, middle and high school, so we have three different drop off and pick up times! Once we've shuffled those Edna and I settle in for our mornings together. She follows me around as I do various chores, on a good day. Then we play and have a snack before nap time. During nap time is typically when I get to "work" writing, going through images, drafting pages of the 3600 Hours book. Those two hours are my creative play time.
Then we pick everyone up from school or they arrive home from various car pools. After which we head to ballet 4 of the 5 weekdays. These are some of the moments I treasure in my mothering the most. Edna attends these classes with us and crawls from one family member to the next, we (Me, Mara, Lulu, and Tommy) are often in the same class. It really is a family affair. Together we master new combinations, sweat, and cheer each other along. All with Edna as our witness. It is beautiful to see the way each of them care for her and her needs even whilst dancing. It's magical.
AP: Talk about writing and photography. How do they relate for you?
SW: They are married and inseparable. The one makes the other better while remaining singular. I create images, most often, by the seat of my pants with no plan attached. I just notice something small and see what can happen when I pick up my camera. I love using different cameras for their different strengths and film stocks for the same reasons. But writing, writing is where I try to articulate the answers I find to the questions I'm subconsciously or consciously asking. Which causes me to go make more pictures that reveal new truths. It's an eternal cycle that lets me see deeper and deeper into my own life.
AP: You and I have had ongoing conversation about 3600 hours, including a member podcast we did when the dates of the project concluded. For readers new to the body of work, bring us through it. What is it, why did you need it, where will you show it?
SW: At 37 I fell pregnant. I just love saying it that way. So many ironic layers. It was a very much an unwanted pregnancy. My youngest at the time was 6, 7 when she was born. Then, just as I was wrapping my head around having a fifth child we learned she would have Down syndrome. So many fears plagued the 2nd and 3rd trimester. I learned two things: my shoulders could hold the weight, and I wanted her to be born. Very unexpected feelings.
When she was born getting her home from the hospital was an ordeal, but finally she came home. Once home we never did learn how to nurse, for various reasons, so I pumped and hated it. Everything about it sucked. Out of resentment and desperation I picked up my camera and photographed the only place I wanted to be: my bed. After about a week and 5 rolls of film later I was bored of the bed and started photographing the life that surprisingly was happening around me. I wept when the first scans came back.
The practice is messy and cyclical, but the way it helps me connect with the beauty of my own life is incredible. It is something, now found, I will never be able to live without.
SW: I thought I was missing out on life when really it had followed me to the rocking chair tied to a pump. When we start a project it always begins with a question whether we know it or not. At the time I didn't know, but the question I was asking was how on earth can I make it through? Now I frame the questions this way: What happens when we live the thing we never wanted? And find the answers again and again in the images I created during that year of pumping for Edna. Various printed works were shown in a gallery through The Sierra Nevada Arts Foundation in Reno Nevada. I am currently working to compile the works into a book and from there I'm not sure. I just know it's a conversation that feels important and I want to keep having.
The greatest revelation from the work has been truly finding my creative practice and why it is so incredibly important to me. The practice is messy and cyclical, but the way it helps me connect with the beauty of my own life is incredible. It is something, now found, I will never be able to live without. The question I contemplate often lately is how to, can I, would I want to, is it possible to extend that beyond myself and offer this to others? This process of imagery for their lives? I visit it often. No concrete answers yet.
My process is built around my life and my life feeds my work.
AP: How active are you in your faith? What are you enriched by? What do you reject?
SW: I will affectionately label myself devout. Imperfectly so, but committed. It is the lens with which I measure the world and myself in it. I will forever love the complex ideas of atonement, sacrifice, and that suffering is sacred - though that last one in more of a Buddist viewpoint and less the Christian viewpoint. Growing up Mormon and remaining a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (our full and offical name) at an early age I rejected some of the things I would label as 'traditions' and not doctronal. Silly things, but that often hurt others or are just nonsense.
AP: What’s bothering you right now in life and art?
SW: In life: Oh a million things. My own imperfections and limitations in ballet. The constraints a family puts on creating work I want to create while simultaneously being my muses and reason for creating. Being a woman and some of the very real and some not so real generational fears put upon me. Being 5'1 and not being able to reach the top shelf. Wondering if my remodel will ever be finished. PMS.
In art: Time. I wish there was more time to dedicate to it. I wish I didn't have to pick up the mess I made creating so little hands don't ruin it. I wish I could leave it out and come back when I feel called to. I wish for a much much slower paced life with the delusion that time is eternal and things will never change! As if I could waddle around peacefully living an idealic life whilst creating my best work. It's a delusion I visit often, but in truth my process is built around my life and my life feeds my work, so perhaps it is just a good marriage. Not perfect, but intertwined, supportive, and healthy.
If I stay in my head too long the questions stay superficial. I have to create the images to reveal the truths.
AP: What’s your process for coming up with the right questions about your life and work. Dialoging? Journaling? Who or what is involved?
SW: Making the work. If I stay in my head too long the questions stay superficial. I have to create the images to reveal the truths. Then through writing and creative conversations with dear friends I unearth the crux of the thing. The beautiful part though is that as I change I gain new insights and new questions and answers are revealed while the work (the images and past words) remains unchanged. In this way time is a dear friend to my process. Ironic.
AP: What do you want to remember about your photographic life right now?
SW: That I did it! With little to no time, little to no space, and little to no intention even. I didn't know what I was doing, just that I had to do it. At the time all I saw was what I couldn't do and thought that was the point. Little did I know. Perhaps, it was, in this way, the midwife of my transformation because it allowed me to see myself and love what I saw.
AP: Thank you so much. Where can we find you online?
SW: Right now - just on IG @saramweir. But maybe I'll hit publish on that website soon: saraweir.co. Writing at saraweir.substack.com.