[Photography] Interview with Sarah E N Kohrs

[KELP JOURNAL] Sarah, these photos are stunning, so let’s dive right in. All of the photographs focus intensely on texture. I love it. It makes me look and then look again. Was that part of your intent? Do you hope to change the way people look at things? 

[SARAH E N KOHRS] Thank you so much! Yes, I want viewers to savor the texture, light, color, composition of the images I create - to encourage a second look and appreciate something they might pass every day. It’s healthy to view life from various perspectives and offers a chance to be more clement.

[KJ] I love texture as a subject but I am not sure that it is everyone’s first instinct to capture on film. Traditional landscapes and things that move are popular subjects. I am curious about your process. What leads to this focus on texture? Does it have anything to do with your other life as a potter? 

[SENK] Great question - it actually starts from my childhood. I have myopia and astigmatism, which developed when I was very young. The first thing I noticed when I got my first pair of glasses was the fluttering of individual leaves on trees outside. It was mind-boggling. I had no idea there was such beautiful texture to experience in the world around me. I suppose my love of pottery likely stems from this, too; however, I was prone to making mud pies in my mother’s nicest dishes as a girl - much to her dismay. So, the pottery bit developed a little differently.

[KJ] Is it true that you create metallic prints of your photographs?!?!?! I have never heard of that. It’s a very cool thing but it seems like it would be so hard to achieve given that metal is not porous. How ever do you do it? How did you think to do it in the first place? 

[SENK] My photographs are printed on metallic photographic paper - it’s a special paper with a lack of texture and a touch of silver and yellow to bring out greater contrast in the image. Consider painters who first use a non-traditional color for their canvas before painting - some use a yellow or orange wash to bring out vibrancy in their colors. I cannot take credit for a unique process - it’s all in the paper!

[KJ] I always love asking my multi-faceted creators some questions about the intertwining of their media. I am always so curious if they believe that one form influences another. Does your poetry, for example, show up in the way or what you photograph? 

[SENK] Definitely - the media I use to create with all inspire one another. When I’ve been working in the pottery studio, I walk away physically tired, but mentally and spiritually recharged. Often, poetry ideas will pour out of that time. Similarly, when I’m on site photographing, poems spill out from the intentional focus on specific details in the world around me. I believe having multiple media in which to work is healthy and life-breathing for the other creative forms.

[KJ] Another favorite question of mine is whether the form of a project is something you choose or does it choose you? Does something, for instance, begin as a poem and become a photo, or does it begin as a poem and stay a poem? 

[SENK] I think it’s a little of all. There are times a line or stanza develops from seemingly nowhere and I have to find paper and pen to jot it down. I’ve written on the clichéd napkin or envelope, a deposited check, even my arm. When I go hiking for a photoshoot or meandering around a city, I try to take a small journal and pen, too, so that I can write down lines or thoughts that pop up from my excursions. If I don’t have that, I sometimes send a random text to my husband! He’s often confused, but understands later. I love to write ekphrastic poems (sometimes about my photographs), but usually make a conscientious choice to do that - so most poems arise from the experience of creating, whether that’s something I see, hear, write about, or remember. I have noticed at times a desire for my creative endeavors to collaborate - lately, I’ve been considering putting haiku on some of my pottery forms, for example - so that both breathe life into the other.  Regardless, that’s what creating is about for me - it’s something akin to breathing. I cannot imagine my life without the creative arts, and I’m more alive for engaging in them.

Sarah E N Kohrs is a writer and artist with poems published in Arboreal Literary Magazine, Bluebird Word, Chariot Press, Culinary Origami, The Elevation, GROUND, Kitchen Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Rattle’s Poets Respond, Stoneboat, Wild Roof Journal, and numerous other literary journals. She has received the Peter K. Hixson Poetry Award, as well as Poetry Society of Virginia's Dr. Lucille E Thompson Memorial, Judah, Sarah, Grace, & Tom Memorial, Ekphrastic Poetry, Don Frew & John Newcomb Memorial, and Ada Sanderson Memorial Awards. Her chapbook, Chameleon Sky, won the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild poetry award. Sarah has a BA in Classical Languages and Archaeology from College of Wooster, Ohio, and a Virginia teaching license endorsed in Latin and Visual Arts. Life experiences that bolster her art include homeschooling her sons, creating pottery for local Empty Bowl suppers, and volunteering for the rural non-profit, Valley Educational Center for the Creative Arts (VECCA). SENK lives in Shenandoah County, Va, on land she humbly recognizes belonged to the Manahoac. https://senkohrs.com.