We were lucky to catch up with Anna Robertson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Anna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Like most artists I’m sure, I think the work that I have found to be the most meaningful versus the work that has had the most emotional response from viewers has been totally different. “Liminal Bodies” initially started as this seriously important body of work for me, but in that time period I was just really pushing myself into this anxious frenzy. I think it was also the class I was in, just a little, but I had pressured myself into making this the best work I could possibly do, and it ironically wasn’t very well-received by my professor at the time. I have been a people pleaser my entire life, hinging my self-worth on others’ opinions, (something I have really been forced to confront recently) so this shook me terribly. When I finished the work, I really hated it, and still don’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped (though I do like individual pieces by themselves), but I had friends and strangers reach out to me, telling me how much it resonated with them, how they saw themselves in certain images. I purposefully didn’t write a statement to accompany it because I wanted to leave it pretty open because I actually had lost the meaning in my frenzy to make it “perfect”. It surprised me.

“Breath Studies” has probably been my favorite and most resonant project. I think it’s because I am not in it PHYSICALLY, you know? It’s more the idea of myself as a more expansive being. As beyond the body. I am taking the act of breathing and showing it in other forms. That was how it started. As I have expanded my creative practice into writing and history and the continuing connection between the the physical body and the earth body, “Breath Studies” is evolving. I am asking a lot of questions as I continue the project past its origin. I am hoping to make a book of them and narrow in a common thread. The root of the project is showing the landscape as a living body, a breathing body. Now I am thinking, “Well, the body keeps record of history. The body scars, the body holds trauma, responds to pleasure, flourishes with care. How can I show that in the earth?” It’s been such a connecting process! When I’m really into the photographing process, it is so meditative. I feel like I’m sinking into the landscape and really tapping into all the life that’s there and the time it has spent there.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an artist, and I am working towards a career in museums as a curator.

I’ve always been really artistically minded, so I can’t really tell you how I got into my industry by naming a specific point in time. I just sort of gravitated towards photography. I’ve changed a lot since I became a photographer. I initially was really into the idea of photojournalism, but as life events happened, as I changed as a person, and as I learned more about old ways of making images, I found I adored platinum printing, or pinhole photography, and the physical process of developing and printing photographs. I loved the physicality of it, and getting my hands dirty the entire process from image making to framing. I’m kinda a control freak when it comes to my work. I want a hand in all of it.

Some time working as a photo editor got me especially excited about curating photography in museums. That sent me towards art history, and I just finished my masters degree and hope to pursue a PhD in a few years when I’m ready to dive back into academia. I’m especially interested in finding missing voices and providing a platform. These voices can be long gone, or contemporary. I view curatorial work, just like photography, as a form of activism. I tell this to people all the time: museums of any size are structures where we can enact positive societal change. This isn’t a new idea of course. Museums are places where people come to learn, where views should be challenged, altered, and tough conversations can be had in secure spaces.

Since I’ve graduated, I’ve been working some freelance work. I helped open a small gallery by providing research and writing didactics for the pieces. Most of the work was all Savannah-based landscape artists who built the foundation for the artistic community Savannah is now. I am a pretty community-centered person, so any time I can help places I lived or have lived in see a little more of their history, I am happy.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Probably being able to connect to people. Finding something that’s bigger than myself. I have felt a deep connection to people I have never met by viewing their work, and to think that maybe someone else could connect to me in that way is especially meaningful.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think I’m constantly unlearning things, which is something anyone should be doing at 24 years old. I’m unlearning a masculine and white-centric education, I’m unlearning that pleasing others is not the source of my worth, which is such a patriarchal idea thrust on women. I hope to always be unlearning harmful ideas. If I’m not, I’m just stagnating.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.annarobertsonphotography.com
• Instagram: anna_c_robertson
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-robertson-b72a62156/

Image Credits
all photographs by artist