Sheron Rupp
Photographs from Ohio
After getting my M.F.A. at age 40, I was drawn to going back in 1983-85 to Ohio, the place where I spent my formative years growing up and going to college in the 1960's. I was intrigued to see once again the small town life I remembered from my childhood. Usually, I drove around small towns, trying to get up the nerve to stop and approach a place or scene which called to me. Rarely, did I jump out of the car first with my camera slung over my shoulder, along with a pocket book filled with film. I usually approached people with inane questions or comments. There was always something to talk about, usually the stuff I saw in their yards (one-eyed stuffed bears on porches, new puppies, gardens, kids at play). I became interested in the poor, southeastern parts of Ohio, where people hung out more in their yards and the children were hungry for attention. Time was heightened when I finally could get to some form of communication about my work and could ask for permission to take some photographs. Then the real work began, sometimes knowing I had to have eyes in the back of my head.
Later in 2001and 2002, I returned to Ohio to continue photographing there. This time duty called, the responsibility of checking in on my mother who was in failing health. For distraction and relief, I wandered around environs much closer to the town of Mansfield where I grew up. I returned to familiar parks where my sister and I used to play, as well as visiting a now elderly neighbor, "Mary," who was still living in the same house and neighborhood where I had lived almost fifty years ago. It took a lot of patience to balance long conversations about the past and the present with my eagerness to take photographs. For me, sometimes the best pictures come after a little bit of personal exchange and conversation. However, this said, I rarely can return to the same exact place and people to continue photographing them. I can become too attached, or involved, and the photographing becomes secondary. There is no longer the excitement of discovery. In the end, it's the photograph which matters, a hard admission when you pose yourself as a "concerned photographer." With this is mind, I move on, realizing that there are always more horizons to see and new-found strangers to meet.
(Sheron Rupp, pers. email, 25 June 2012)
