Elena Cremona – Postcards from the Past

interview by hannah geddes

Trees in various shapes and forms, often twisted as if stuck in motion; and sculptural images of rock faces, accentuating the indents and textures that mark their history, dominate Elena Cremona’s body of work Postcards from the past. These black and white images document the vast and powerful landscape of Joshua Tree National Park in California. Cremona created the series while travelling through the Mojave Desert during a fractious point in her life. Her camera became a coping mechanism; the trees, rocks and earth became the anchor for her memories. 

Hannah Geddes: This project is more than a collection of individual images brought together to form a body of work, they are remnants of a journey that you went on  – how do you use the camera to process and document your feelings and emotions?

Elena Cremona: You know, I don’t think I set out to document a specific thing when I go out with my camera - I’m sort of just led by intuition, or compelled to photograph a certain thing. Usually I don’t really realise what it is I’m capturing until I develop my roll of film and see it a couple days or weeks later. I thought about this the other day, how I have a really hard time recalling memories and emotions linked to them, which is why I feel as though I’m so drawn to photographing and capturing everything: I can attach emotions quite easily if I have a tangible visual to remind me of what I felt.

The work documents a period when you experienced a break up, although your images are devoid of people. Can you speak about how you have used landscapes as a metaphor for your experience?

I didn’t at all set out to document the decline of a relationship when I did it, I just remember driving through the Mojave Desert and that was a period of time our relationship was the worst it had been, which was a stark contrast of emotions I was feeling (especially as I was in my favourite place in the world). There was a point when we drove through Joshua Tree National Park that it got so intense in the car that there was no other route other than me grabbing my camera and seeking solitude within the trees and rocks, it almost felt as though my only comfort at the time. To be as far away as possible from him, from anyone, and just focus on what I saw in front of me. Joanna L. Cresswell, who wrote the intro to my book describes what I was feeling so well: In relativity to human experience, landscapes are static things - their changes are slow, their ecosystems cyclical, and any given day is likely to unfold within them as much as the one prior; it is us that moves through landscapes, shapes and colours them with our emotions, and remembered them ‘before’.

The images have a sculptural quality to them. They are shot in black and white, highlighting the shapes and textures in the images  Can you talk about the staging of your images, the process behind composing and deciding when to take a photograph?

Honestly, I didn’t stage these images at all, I didn’t think about composition or the shapes - I was just trying to hold up my camera to, essentially sculptural shapes, that wouldn’t change and morph every two seconds. Looking back at me roaming the landscape alone, it definitely feels as though I was trying to cement myself film in time, because the past/ present was too painful to deal with, and the future seemed too uncertain and scary to look at.

You call your images postcards, which immediately associates them with feelings of nostalgia and a time gone by. Can you talk about the title for the project?

I wanted  to shed light on the fact that these are images captured from a time past, one that I cannot get back, but hold their memory very fondly as they taught me a lot. Who doesn't like the feeling of picking up a postcard from an old time and remember exactly that: the past.

Does your work as a dark room printer feed into your own practice?

Yes, I would say hugely. Being able to print my own work makes me feel more connected to my craft, and not only that - it allows me to be involved in that process for a longer period of time, which sometimes stretches out to months. The thought of shooting an image, developing in and scanning it in, all within the same day doesn't feel like much of a process to me - but revisiting negatives, enlarging them, being hands on involved in the printing process, it just allows me more time to process the emotions linked to my work.

What compels you to make work as a photographer? 

Being able to capture truth and being able to pour meaning into who I am within that. I’m most comfortable and myself when I have a camera in front of my face, it allows my head to take a backseat and be led by my heart.

Postcards from the Past is available to order here:
guesteditions.com/collections/elena-cremona
elenacremona.com