NORWAY — A few winters ago, Andree Kehn looked for a seasonal job to help her fight the isolating winter blues that often come with living in rural New England. Little did she know that an indoor life guarding gig would help her develop a series of underwater photographs that focus on that very real and oftentimes haunting subjects.
A reception for Kehn’s series, “The Story and the Silence,” was held last night at Center for Ecology-Based Economy at The Commons, 447 Main St., Norway. The eight 24-by-36-inch photographs printed on brushed aluminum — to give the images “a little more gravitas” and reflective underwater feel — will remain on display through Friday, July 24.
On Monday, Kehn talked about her indoor lifeguard job at Jay Peak in Northern Vermont where she worked from 2011 to 2013. She’s shot weddings and has worked at newspapers over the years and didn’t financially need a winter job. But she realized she was in desperate need of something during the colder months — human contact.
“I took the job so I wasn’t so alone,” Kehn said.
And once she wasn’t alone, she saw a prime opportunity to photograph her fellow lifeguards inside the water park, under the fluid liquid. She got an underwater housing unit for her digital SLR camera, but shooting subjects underwater is easier said than done.
“There were definite equilibrium issues. I am pretty floaty,” Kehn said, noting she had to use weights to keep her underwater while shooting.
Once she moved from Vermont back to Oxford Hills, settled in Greenwood and got a job at the Sun Journal, Kehn found herself expanding the project, shooting in lakes and pools.
“A pool works better because there’s less particulates. … It worked out to be a little more sophisticated when I had an hour to focus on one model,” she said. “I can tell almost instantly if someone is going to be a good subject.”
She tapped on her fellow wedding photographer friends and found other subjects through Model Mayhem, an online modeling network. She’s looking for people who have a certain vulnerability about them, and those who want to be the center of attention but don’t know how to ask for it.
Kehn’s favorite image from the series — which has 20 finished prints in total — is one she took of a wedding photographer friend in a pink dress and antique baby doll. The pair went shopping for the props for the shoot, where they came across the baby and created a back story of the subject playing a demented mother who’s trying to parent the doll. The subject wears a contorted look on her face as she, her pink dress and trailing doll float through the water.
“The point of the photographs is this experience of isolation and communication. People tend to wrap themselves up in their own isolation and create all these barriers,” Kehn said. “Each character has a message but they’re not communicating it. There’s little back stories between all of them, which aren’t necessarily obvious to the viewer. The viewer is allowed to create their own story.”
Sometimes subjects are forced to create their own stories when things don’t go as planned. Such was the case with Michael Menes, a performer from Buckfield, who despite his and Kehn’s efforts, could not capture underwater juggling. Thankfully he brought a metal wash tub, which he sat in, and grabbed a long, wooden scrub brush, a perfect prop for him to grasp, from the shooting locale.
“That’s real fear on his face,” Kehn said as she looked at the photograph on the wall at CEBE. “He went straight down.”
There are at least two photographs on display where the subject’s head is either masked by bubbles or out of the water and photo frame completely.
“The more I started doing them, the more I liked the images with no heads,” Kehn said, as she pointed a photo of a woman who’s only shown from the torso down.
Her red painted toes stand out against the small blue and white tiled floor of the pool. The cream colored dress stands straight up and down as the lacy over-skirt floats at the top of the water, completely covering the subject’s face and upper body.
Another image shows one of the subjects from Model Mayhem donning a blue dressed and a lacy see-through parasol behind her head. She’s floating in an almost suggestive pose with one leg outstretched and the other crossed over, with a fair amount of skin showing. But Kehn doesn’t believe things are always as they seem.
“To me she looks very vulnerable, like she’s trying to put forth this image of herself looking secure and sexy,” she said.
For more information about Kehn’s underwater work, watch www.vimeo.com/123086069.
Kehn was recently hired as a staff photographer at the Sun Journal.
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