Disenchanted: Q & A with Kaitlin Jencso
Kaitlin Jencso is a photographer who lives and works in Washington, DC. Jencso explores the emotional terrain of ever-expanding and evolving relationships through loss, ephemera, bloodlines, and the land. Jencso graduated with a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 2012. She won Best Fine Art Series at FotoWeek DC in both 2014 and 2016 and received the Award of Merit in the 2014 Focal Point show at the Maryland Federation of Art.
What challenges did you face in creating a long-term project that spanned over four years?
The main challenges I experienced while undertaking this long-term project was selecting an edit because of the large archive I had accumulated. I was shooting constantly on whatever camera I happened to have at hand at the time, so I was producing hundreds of images a month. All of these certainly didn’t make the cut, but it made for a glut of imagery to process.
The other most challenging part of doing this type of long-term work was dealing with repetition. Much of the imagery produced was taken at my parent’s home over the years, so there was a lot of recurring locations, rooms, and people. The variables were the poses, events, light, distance from the camera, and gestures. There were so many beautiful moments that were similar over the years that made for some tough editing decisions.
Did you find there was an opposition or dichotomy between, as you state, “the immediacy of the need to capture the moment as it unfolded” and the long-term nature of the work?
I think these things went hand-in-hand. The immediacy of the work stemmed from using the camera to capture an event as it occurred or a fleeting moment or feeling. I found that even when I wasn’t in the hospital room, or with a grieving family member, the weight of loss was upon me and tinting how I viewed my everyday experiences. I decided to photograph whatever triggered those feelings.
This allowed me to feel like I was doing something instead of idly standing by. I would review my image choices weekly/monthly and it became clear that this was a space for me to dwell in and process the experience. Because I was not interested in reporting events as they happened, but rather capturing fleeting feelings to convey the overall arc of grief, this became a long-term project with no distinct narrative.
Was it difficult to embody the role of voyeur within your own family? Did you feel removed or closer to them by capturing them through your lens?
I am the youngest of four children and have always been an observer of my family. As a child I would tuck myself into the corner of a room and just watch everyone around me. As I got into photography in my teens it felt only natural to continue this type of observation of those I was closest to, but this time through the lens. I have made work about my parents for various projects while pursuing my BFA, including my thesis work 20161, so they were accustomed to me following them with a camera. It never occurred to me to not document my family during this time. Although we were all grieving this loss in our own ways independently, we were also bound together by it.
During the actual act of photographing I was aware that I was using my camera as a barrier to acknowledging the reality of the situation and graveness of emotion. This was both a coping mechanism and a reflexive instinct. I’ve always believed art should be personal and authentic, and photographing these difficult times allowed me to process through a visual, emotive diary while also bringing me closer to my family by actively seeing and realizing their experiences.
How did you find beauty in painful and deeply personal topics?
I believe that there is beauty in the mundane. There is a captivating moment to be had in any scenario if you’re open to seeing it. I’ve trained myself to look for these scenes—magical light, a brief gesture, a small detail – that goes beyond recording reality to relaying an experience.
I follow this same mode of photographing when dealing with deeply personal or painful experiences. I harness the intensity of a feeling and distill it into a visually captivating and emotionally poignant image. The rawness and closeness push me to create images that are fiercely personal to me but convey an atmosphere that the viewer can also identify and empathize with.
What is next for you, will you continue working on this same series or are you embarking onto a new project?
I will always continue to photograph my family but am putting a period on Disenchanted. My goals are to take my final edit of 50+ images I have for this body of work and create a book within the next year. I am currently working on a new body of work which will be shown at the Hamiltonian gallery in April 2019.
