Anonymous Blue : Women at the Handy House

wainer cuffee. with love, jo annP1060080.jpg

prev / next

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·

Anonymous Blue are cyanotypes created from photos of anonymous and not-entirely-anonymous women in the collections of the Westport MA Historical Society and the Wainer-Cuffe family archive. They record moments I didn’t witness, but can see. I don’t know the subjects, locations, or photographers. They document a life lived, a truth at the root of my interest in photography.

Cyanotypes are blue, and here blue becomes an equalizer. I had questions about who is in a collection and who is left out. Who decides what is preserved – both at the moment a picture is taken, and later, when it is either collected or discarded? And who or where are the women of Westport?

Jenny O’Neill Director of the WHS shared this related passage written by a member of the Hall family, who summered at Westport Point.

“Who lives in this bright brown and yellow house just as the village street turns a little to the left or east, I should say, in the east in the true vernacular, Caanan Dyer and his wife – another invisible spirit – the men are ubiquitous – one sees them in Church – at the village store, at the wharf or out in their boats. Not the women – never – in their brown calicoes and sun-bonnets. You can sometimes see them disappearing like very shadows behind the screen door but that is all”

Using silk references another hidden history of Westport, which once supported a grove of mulberry trees for a silkworm enterprise. Many of these silkworms were tended by the Macomber family, including Lydia Macomber (1812-1892), a well-educated deaf Westport resident. Raising silkworms was a suitable activity for a young, deaf woman. While the Westport silk industry only lasted a few years, Lydia became another present ghost for me. Although I didn’t find any photographs of Lydia Macomber in the collection, these silk cyanotypes are a tribute to her. Silk is a wispy, mysterious, sensuous, and organic material that brought these photographs to life.

This project was made possible with funding from the Helen E. Ellis Charitable Fund.