We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sara Weir. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sara below.
Sara, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
At 37 I fell pregnant. I just love saying it that way. So many ironic layers. It was a very much 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. But 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 a whole other ordeal, but finally she was home.
Once home we were never able 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. 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 this? 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.
Sara, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I have lived many lives. I’ve been a ballerina, a wife and mother, a teacher and mentor, family photographer, wedding photographer, again a ballerina, and finally a documentary photographer.
I picked up a camera because we lived in a beautiful place and I didn’t have much to do. I started photographing others and found I really loved it. I moved onto weddings where I found film photography and never looked back.
Over the years and finding myself burnt out I turned the camera on my own life and family which resulted in my first fine art project called 3600 Hours – for all the hours spent pumping and feeding my fifth child during her first year of life. I was hooked. On the creative process, the works, the editing and storytelling it takes to curate a show, and the conversations surrounding motherhood and art and pumping.
Now, I spend my days dancing with my children and photographing our life as we are together. Asking the questions of mothering in modernity and challenging our perceptions around that choice. I write and keep a substack to know these things for myself and share them in the hopes of engaging in deeper conversations with others.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
I thought if I just did what others told me to I would find my success. I tried for about two years to sell an online course. The course did well and I made money, but I felt so burnt out and unfulfilled. I thought I wanted to be creative in that way to I could have financial stability and then I could make my art. I had it so backwards. But over the years it has been very difficult to tune out the voices that trained me to market or behave in a certain way, as the only way, to make money. I have to work very hard to hear my own voice about what I want to do and how I want to do it. It’s scary to face the path when I can’t see how to move forward, but I am so much happier!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I was attending a business conference when I finally had the courage to say out loud that what I really wanted was to be an artist. I cried. I couldn’t help myself. It felt so incredibly scary. I meant having to close down everything else I had been building for the past year so I could free up enough time to pursue personal projects. Scared the crap out of me. I was met with so much support. I went home, closed down my business, and began a personal project that went no where. Really, it wasn’t until years later that I found my process and created a body of work that I was proud to show. But it was the pivot point that finally put me on the right path.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://saraweir.substack.com/
- Instagram: @saramweir
Image Credits
All photographs created and copyrighted by Sara Weir