Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson
Kate Hutchinson's HHS! submission, a selection of photographs from a larger series, is one with a lofty literary history. Her project is an adaptation of an adaptation: her starting point is James Joyce's Ulysses, and Joyce's, in turn, was Homer's epic The Odyssey.
The series, and the two literary works upon which it is based, tell the tale of travels and adventures; thus it's very fitting that the title of Hutchinson's series is Ulysses, a personal journey. There is a strong sense in Hutchinson's photographs of the artist moving around, searching for her roots, her origins—both in the chosen geographic location of her series (the city where her parents were born), and in her attempt to connect with a work of literature that has specific personal meaning (her father's love of Joyce's iconic book, and Ulysses's actual link to her ancestry). She explains the back-story in her artist's statement:
This work, all shot in and around Dublin, Ireland, deals with my connection to the city of my parents' birth, as well as my father and our relationship. James Joyce's book Ulysses, which features two characters and their travels and encounters during a day in Dublin, has always felt very personal to me. My great-great grandfather Joseph Hutchinson was Lord Mayor of Dublin on the day in question and he is therefore mentioned more than once in Ulysses. As well, my father has always been fascinated with this masterwork and on any of our many family trips to Dublin we would often stop and do readings from the book at the appropriate places.
Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson
I find it fascinating that Hutchinson uses as the basis of her work a piece of literature that is an overt appropriation of an epic poem that was itself an adaptation, an amalgamation of tales passed down through the oral tradition in ancient times. (It is worth noting that it is widely believed that Homer is a literary and historic construct—not a single, incredibly prolific poet—but rather a name assigned to ground and solidify a huge collection of stories with disparate and unknowable origins). This idea of tales passed down, maintained and reinterpreted through generations and over centuries seems to mirror Hutchinson's description of the lore and legend passed down within her own family. As in The Odyssey, where readers follow King Odysseus on his tumultuous 10-year journey to return to his wife and son in Ithaca after the Trojan War, we sense in Hutchinson's photographs an attempt to connect with where she came from, a longing for her true home.
There is an antiquated look to these photographs; an uneven, mossy, seaside wall calls to mind an ancient construction. Even a telephone pole takes on the appearance of something abandoned and obsolete, nearly overwhelmed by vines like a column from some ruined temple. This visual quality serves as a further link to the series' roots in ancient Greece.
Untitled, 2010 by Kate Hutchinson
Hutchinson's photographs are all untitled; at first I found this a little frustrating and longed for locations, identifiers and ways to concretely link her story to its literary predecessors. However, this might ultimately serve as a way for the artist to make this journey, this mining of family history and mythology truly her own—an individual and private story.
A single figure appears in these photographs, her back turned towards the camera as she strides purposefully towards the ocean, and we can only guess at her identity and mission: Perhaps this is the artist, figuratively embarking on her own, personal odyssey? You can see more of Kate's work on her website.