Between Bodies

What’s between you and me? Between us and them? Between our bodies and the places we inhabit? Between the sky, the land, the water? Between wild bodies and built spaces? Between absence and presence? Between who we are now and who we long to become?

Between Bodies was a year-long call for engagement that invited photographers to use their craft as a relational tool and as a way to become more fully embodied in their relationships. Together, we expanded the definition of a body beyond our own human bodies while exploring the spaces and places that connect all bodies.

Melanie Carvalho

rosie villano

What is a body? Where does one body end and another body begin? How does your relationship with your own body shape the way we respond to other bodies and the earth’s body? We began this call with many questions.

It’s through the body that we connect with the world around us. Our experiences begin with the senses—the five physical senses, as well as the internal senses of intuition, proprioception, and emotions. While photography is a visual medium, it’s very much dependent on other sensual experiences. By attuning to what our body is saying and feeling, we incorporate a full range of sensual experiences into our photographs.

In this call, we explored embodied practices and rekindling long-forgotten sensorial ways of knowing. We asked: can photography help us unearth and flesh out the relationships that exist in our most embodied moments, and if so, how we can use our practice to invite more sensual, intuitive ways of making and knowing?

What is Between Bodies?

FEATURED PROJECTS

Featured

Handheld - Kate Kennington Steer

Kate Kennington Seer shares this meditation on how chronic illness mediates her contact with a single place, often dictating how - the means and the form - she makes a photograph, until, on some days it becomes the subject of photographic enquiry no matter what the situation. This portfolio is an attempt to render some of this visible.

Gravida - Eliza Bell Schweizbach

Pregnancy is a direct embodiment of the question — where does one body end and another begin? In this portfolio, Eliza Bell embarks on a deep exploration of the known and unknown alongside the pregnant people she photographs.

Un-Earthed - Rosie Villano

In this series of photographs, Rosie Villano investigates the question: what does it mean to embody a relationship to the earth? For them, that means learning about the land they live on, knowing the food they eat, and appreciating the bounty. These photographs are an expression of their love and reverence for the land.

Upheaval - Frances Bukovsky

Frances Bukovsky began photographing Upheaval while seaching for a home, both within their own body, as well as the world around them. Set in Appalachia between their hometown and their chosen home, Upheaval revisits childhood memories and forges new connections between body and geography to assemble a sense of self informed by cycles of grief and upheaved circumstances.

In Pieces - Ruth Steinberg

Looking for a way to explore depression without making clichéd images, Ruth Steinberg chose the cyanotype process for its interpretive possibilities, which allowed for the multi-layering of self-portraits and plant material to evoke, rather than tell, her story.

Between Bodies: Leah Mowers

In this ongoing series, Leah Mowers explore vulnerability, both hers and that of the natural world, by listening to and responding to the landscape rather than dominating it. Leah inhabit its form by molding her body into the terrain, emphasizing coexistence over control. This work invites viewers to reflect on their own relationship with the natural world.

Chris Warner-Carey

Barbara Dombach

Some of us were drawn to the between spaces themselves, thinking of them not as negative spaces to fill but rather as positive spaces to be activated by. That betwixt and between that immeasurably animates intervals and openings between the visible and invisible, bound and unbound. In these liminal spaces, you might find yourself dwelling in moments of grace or bewilderment where presence arises alongside absence, portals to the past are alive with future possibilities, and seeming opposites come together in moments of surprising creativity.

Together, we came to recognize the liminal—the space between bodies and worlds—as an invitation to step into new ways of being and becoming. Can learning to dwell creatively in “between” help us navigate our rapidly shifting landscapes in this unprecedented time of transition and transformation?

What is Between Bodies?

FEATURED PROJECTS

Featured

When the Trees Sing — Barbara Dombach

"When the Trees Sing" is an exploration and imaginative journey of what Barbara Dombach envisions the forest is saying to her by listening intently to the sounds of the forest.

Between transience and eternity: one afternoon at the river. - Julie Williams Dixon

Julie Williams Dixon made these image one afternoon as she waded in an ancient river, a body of water. Here, she sunned her body on ancient stones and pondered the transience of her physical body in juxtaposition to ancient surroundings. Playing with scale and abstraction, she explored the space between transience and eternity.

Bloodroot, Displaced - Kaye Savage

In this project, Kaye Savage offers a new opportunity to exist to Bloodroot plants destroyed by Hurricane Helene. After intended long-term observation sites became inaccessible, she placed previously made photographs of the plant in new environments. The plant Bodies photographed exist now only in our imagination and archives.

Everything She Touches Changes - Gretchen LeMaistre

In this portfolio, Gretchen LeMaistre returns to the same sites along the Swannanoa River in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in an attempt to share the visceral reaction she has experienced in this place. While the photographs convey only a fraction of experience, she hopes they can function as tokens for conversation, connection and witness with one another and with the world at large.

Valery Lyman - Utility Lines

Valery Lyman has been fascinated by the utility lines in Cambridge for years. What impresses her is the chaos. While everything else in the city is so quaint, controlled, manicured, and rich, right above the tree line are the ones that got away. For Valery, these are the only wild organisms left in Cambridge.

Chris Warner-Carey, Unknowing

Through Chris Warner-Carey’s photographs the viewer is invited to imagine and contemplate what is just out of conscious sight in the shadows and mist, always with the understanding that there are forces and presences that resist logical analysis, and will remain unknowable by the human mind alone.

Kim Anderson

Kaoly Gutierrez

What is Between Bodies?

In this rapidly polarizing world, where empathy, compassion, and understanding are in short supply, can photography positively shape and change how we relate to each other and the natural world? Can it help speak to the physical and emotional experiences of those who are inhabiting bodies that are not readily accepted or understood—and the tension, vulnerability, and resilience of occupying spaces that are hostile or unaccommodating to certain human and more-than-human bodies?

As Mike Belleme, photographer and co-founder of Kinship, so beautifully reminds us, we are humans on the slow road to remembering. And the road to remembering kinship isn’t always straightforward and simple. Sometimes, what passes between bodies is painful, and bearing witness takes place in silence. And sometimes, what passes between bodies is so exquisitely beautiful that it defies description. Here, photography comes into its fullness at the far edges of language, right where words fail. Through the quality of our presence and attention, human and more-than-human bodies echo with luminous grace. And then, what passes between bodies is something akin to love.

FEATURED PROJECTS

Featured

Memory of Place - Yvonne Dalschen

In this portfolio, Yvonne asks if a place holds memory, if it remembers. These images are made at the Topography of Terror Site in Berlin, an exhibition that addresses the horrors of the Nazi regime. Topography studies land forms and features, it traces the surface. The visitor has an annotated map to follow. When the body reacts by changing posture and step, and the eyes scrutinize every detail, is it simply the brain imagining, creating composites? - Would there be a change if one didn’t have a map?

Closed - Shawn Moreton

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns, many local independent businesses had to close their doors. Walking through the empty streets, Shawn saw shops, cafés, and gathering places—once alive with people—now closed and silent. These spaces became separated from us by panes of glass, a barrier between us and the world we knew, between us and the spaces we inhabit - Separated by an invisible force, a virus, that is passed between us, between bodies.

Common Ground - Ann Villano

Several years ago, Ann Villano became obsessed with taking photos of decaying edifices: barns, old houses, falling stone walls. When she considered images for "Between Bodies," she focused instead on images where she saw a transference of energy between two entities. In these photos, trees or plants are giving, taking, and supporting. They stand guard over a cemetery, beam energy onto a decaying house, or hold up decaying walls. In some cases, one cannot be sure where one material starts and the other ends.

Buddy you’re dying and I hate that for you - Barron Northrup

In this ongoing series, Barron explores the relationship between the human body and the landscape he walks everyday by listening to and responding to the landscape rather than dominating it. By molding his body into the terrain, he creates a visual dialogue between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing vulnerability, coexistence, and interconnectedness.

I’m Sorry. Forgive Me. Thank You. I Love You. - Kaoly Gutierrez

In this tender portfolio, Kaoly Gutierrez relates to other bodies—both literal and metaphorical—by exploring how personal experiences, emotions, and histories shape her interactions with others. For Kaoly, the “bodies” in question aren’t just physical, but represent the relational dynamics and energies between people: the hidden thoughts, judgments, desires, and unspoken histories that linger in our connections.

Conversing with Water - Alli Harper

When Alli Harper began swimming during the lockdown, it changed her connection to the earth. For the first time, she keenly observed the weather patterns moving over the sky, wondering at the migratory birds in the air, the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun, the tug of the ocean's currents, and the abundant life beneath the water. Suddenly, Alli’s world expanded into something so much bigger, more important, and precious.

BETWEEN BODIES COLLABORATIONS

Featured

Re-Imagining Loss & Grief

Between January and November 2024, seven Kinship community members gathered thirteen times to ‘reimagine’ loss and grief. Whether intentional or in our subconscious, we influenced one another in an unspoken call and response: One person’s vulnerability inviting others to let go; another person’s way of seeing inspiring new perspectives. Honestly and bravely we kept messing around in our collective ‘sandbox,’ letting the grit and grime that is loss and grief transform within, between and among us.

Between Bodies

We’ve come together over the past year to explore embodied photographic practices that are grounded in the senses, shared conversations between bodies, noticed and deepened the relationships that connect all bodies. Along the way, we’ve been bringing our own bodies to photography, sharing personal and collective grief through image making, documenting natural disasters as we live through them, expressing the ways our bodies are intimately entwined with each other’s and the earth body we live in.

A Complex Definition of a Body

Where do our bodies end and other bodies begin? How does our understanding of the edges of our being influence us? For six weeks, practice group participants of A Complex Definition of a Body met and worked in a diverse range of photographic techniques to play with the complexity of defining what a body is.