We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kay Erickson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Kay, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The Ojibwe Project, that I started, is one of the most meaningful projects that I have worked on. I wanted to interview Ojibwe elders about their experiences in boarding schools, and life on the reservations, before that generation has passed. I heard many stories of abuse in the boarding schools, and punishment if the Ojibwe language was used. There were accounts of living on a reservation with no electricity or inside running water. One woman told me that they had to fill a tub of water from the pump outside and then carry the filled tub upstairs to take a bath.
There were many accounts of harassment, and getting to the city, and living outside before they found work and shelter.
There were good stories of evolving times and since 1978, the ability to perform rituals without getting arrested.
More can be seen and heard at: https://www.ojibweproject.com/
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I always was interested in photography ever since I received my first film camera at 7 years old. My parents were photographers as a hobby and my mother hand-tinted black and white photographs for 10 cents a piece besides her night job as head cook for the meals served on Northwest Airline flights.
Photography was always a side hobby for me. We traveled a lot because of my mother’s affiliation with the airlines, which further piqued my interest in recording new cultures and locales.
I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA, Summa cum Laude, in Studio Arts, majoring in Photography with quite well known and famous photographer professors. One professor had us take one roll of 35mm black and white film a day, develop the film, and then make one print without any cropping or dodging, then hang the photo up for a critique. To this day, I shoot what I see and don’t make many changes to the image in post.
I’ve had many careers along the way, including: school librarian, then after a move to California, film editor, and then director of Content Ops for Yahoo Music. I also started a greeting card company with hand-tinted images of little kids, for special occasions, that went international.
I have traveled and shown my work around the world including: Egypt, India, Morocco, Bahrain, Europe, and Cuba.
I continue to capture images and am now on the board of an art gallery, Rodd Briggs, in Long Beach, California
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
While in Calcutta, working with Calcutta Rescue to document their offerings of a clinic, a school, and handicraft center, I decided to take a train up to Varanasi. The train station was something very other worldly, with a host of extremely interesting subjects. There were men carrying sticks with buckets attached on either side, there were fights, beggars, and finally a man doing the belly crawl asking for money. At that point I thought I’d finally reached the extreme edge of my solo travels.
Varanasi is the place where people bring their deceased relatives to be dipped into the Ganges river to clear their karma for the next life, then to be cremated on the shore.
The whole town was centered around the Ganges. Boat rides could be rented, gurus dressed in orange garb sat on the temple steps, laundry was washed in the Ganges and brought up wrapped in red bundles, and a woman was making round pies out of cow dung to be used as fuel.
Quite the visual experience on a solo expedition.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
To me, communicating how I see things is my main goal in capturing images. I have had people tell me that after they looked at my photos, they started to see things in a new way. That was my highest complement.
There is so much tension and division in the world right now. If I can take a photo of a man in Egypt in his usual grab, riding a bicycle, perhaps it can show the viewer that we are all actually quite similar.
Also, children in all cultures are pretty much the same, with their energy and curiosity. Those images are another way to bring us all together. We have more in common than what divides us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kayerickson.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holgalens/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064790315908
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kay-erickson-8909a58/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@okaycards
- Other: https://www.ojibweproject.com/
Image Credits
Kay Erickson