Nothing will tell you where you are. Each moment is a place you've never been.
—Mark Strand
Nothing will tell you where you are, and yet we persist endlessly in the human effort to understand and connect. What is this place, who am I, and what is my relationship here? What can I offer, and what can be learned? What are the particular tastes, scents and sights of a lived experience of a given place, and how do they shift over time? When routine overtakes the senses, how can connection be stirred?
Each moment is a place you’ve never been. I often turn to the natural world where what is offered up to the senses each moment is ever new, where transience is unmistakable. Shifting light, flowing water and gentle wind remind the body that a constant state of change moves outside of us as within. We work against the temporal, in effort to remember and be remembered, through the stories we tell, the art we make. And so I find myself at the intersection of my own desires—to remember and forget, to hold and let go—upon the surface of the land that marks the juncture of life passed with that which is constantly being renewed, a field of decay punctuated near and far by new growth. It is here that I begin again.
My working process is an intuitive response using the camera for its unique relationship with reality. While all of my work is lens-based, the final form is dictated by the content of each particular project ranging from still image portfolio to book, video, projection, and installation.
As spring approaches, The Bascom welcomes another talented artist to our residency program. Anna Norton will serve as the 2022 Photographer in Residence, spending the next two months in the Bascom studios creating her own work and in the schools of the Plateau designing and implementing an integrated science and arts curriculum focusing on visual literacy.
Norton, who lives and works in Highlands and is a native of South Georgia. She received her MFA in a photography from Tyler School of Art and her BA in anthropology from Tulane University. Norton’s photographic work is contemplative and compelling, and she uses the camera to explore the relationships between place and time, offering the viewer the opportunity to see everyday physical and natural phenomenon as ethereal and fleeting. She exhibits in solo and group shows regionally and throughout the US, including a site-specific video installation called Living Space at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. She has been featured in Oxford American, Murze Magazine, and Ain’t-Bad. She has recently exhibited at the Durham Arts Council, Slow Exposures, and the Southeast Center for Photography. A selection of her video stills is published in Elements of Photography by Angela Faris-Belt, her video work is published in Rebekah Modrak’s Reframing Photography, as well as Aspect: The Chronicle of New Media Art. Anna Norton is also a 2021 Puffin Grant recipient.
Each year The Bascom’s Photography Artist in Residence Program brings in educator-artists who offer new insights to our signature STEAM-focused curriculum, integrating basic skills in science, technology, engineering and math with the arts. Because Anna Norton is also the Director of Programs at the Literacy and Learning Center in Highlands; her residency at The Bascom allows two partner organizations to collaborate this year in further supporting a shared commitment to providing free, essential supplemental educational opportunities to school-aged children.
