Bree Lamb: Thanks so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with Fraction, Torrance. It’s a pleasure to learn more about your project, Semaphore, published in 2022 by Kehrer Verlag. 

I understand that this project was developed between 2019 and 2022. Could speak a bit about both the inception and the progression of the series? 

Torrance York: Yes. That is correct. In 2019 I was in a workshop with Sandi Haber Fifield, and she gave us an assignment that ultimately kicked off this project. She asked us to make photos of two adjectives contributed by a peer. I was given “nurturing” and “optimistic.” After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015, these behaviors were already on my self-care To Do list. Surprisingly, I discovered that finding metaphors to represent them encouraged me to practice them.

Semaphore developed its own momentum. My camera became a tool to help me better understand and manage this significant change in my life. The more I learned about Parkinson’s, the more questions I had about my ways of moving, thinking, and aging and what I could do to live my best life with Parkinson’s. In turn, the series grew to include explorations of my fears and challenges and my goals, such as being adaptive and positive.

BL: Was this work a departure for you in terms of your mode of working? 

TY: Yes. While Semaphore is a new direction, I believe my previous work prepared me well to respond to my Parkinson’s diagnosis using photography. I have consistently shot environmental/documentary portraits of children and landscapes. I bought a used Hasselblad in 1990. Since then, I have preferred a square format for my landscape work. Aesthetically, I still enjoy playing with depth of field and focus to direct the viewer’s eye, and there are quite a few photos of nature in the book. I often think of my landscape work as a conversation between elements in the scene of each image. For Semaphore, the conversation occurs between and through the accumulation of images. 

BL: Could you tell us more about the title, Semaphore?

TY: I chose Semaphore as the book’s title for several reasons. Semaphore is a visual language of communication using flags. It was initially developed to allow 19th-century ships to communicate. In 2021 I listened to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and she said that the bodies (of those caught trying to escape the closed community) were hanging on the wall like a semaphore. This ominous and charged use of the term grabbed my attention.

The motivation for the book is to communicate and connect. With my images, I want to explore and convey certain aspects of my changed experience in the world. The photos are a signal from me. Due to my underlying preoccupation with my diagnosis, I frequently discovered signs that spoke to my new concerns. “Listening” to these signals accommodated my growth toward acceptance of this new reality.

Finally, the primary biological problem in the brain of a person with Parkinson’s is that the cells that make the neurotransmitter dopamine are dying off. There is a breakdown in the body’s signaling system.

BL: There’s a stillness to the work, a sense of reflection or an offering of a reflective space to the viewer. How do you think of form, texture, space, or color palette in conjunction with content?

TY: I’m glad that you found a reflective space during your journey through the book. In my life, I tend to complicate things. In Semaphore, I longed to speak clearly and simply—to look at what I was experiencing as honestly as possible and try to make peace with it. Distilling my ideas to their core form brought me joy and increased clarity—like writing in a journal. Now I try to achieve simplicity versus complication in my life as well. I don't always succeed.

The primary geometric shapes of the square and circle appear frequently in the project. They became part of my vocabulary for the series. In terms of color palette, I am often drawn to a white, light-filled environment for the objects I photograph. This palette articulates the liminal space I inhabit as I am grasping for understanding. From there, I found it thrilling to punctuate the sequence with occasional images rich in bold color.

BL: How did you approach sequence and design when putting the book together?

TY: I edited down the images with my workshop peers and Sandi Haber Fifield, but to develop the core sequence, I worked with Rick Wester. I was swimming in photographs, so I appreciated the help of his objective eye. Seeing the photos and pairings he was drawn to out of the 120 images I had laid out was fascinating.

After that first meeting, I would check back as I filled in the blanks, found space for the six text phrases, and decided on my final image. Ultimately the book has 67 photographs.

Laura Pecoroni from Kehrer designed the book. We agreed to use a simple design, and I appreciate her elegant choices, for example, when placing the text for the six phrases off-center. And in our initial design conversation, the whole project team suggested making the book slightly vertical instead of square to give the photographs room to breathe, separate from the page number and date in the bottom corner. Initially, this felt radical, given my penchant for squares, but I am delighted with the outcome.

BL: I’ve seen beautiful, large prints of this work, and I’m curious how you find the book functions in comparison to prints in a gallery. There’s an intimacy to the images that I found to be really complimented by the book form. I really enjoyed moving back and forth through the book, and having new elements catch my eye or take new meaning in the context of other images. 

TY: Thank you for appreciating the prints. I do love them—just differently than the book.

For this series, I printed on rag paper for the first time. I wanted the images to exist on a sheet with weight, body, and texture. This sensibility is also why the book does not have a sleek surface for the cover.

In terms of the book, I place the sequence of images before any explanation from me or curator Rebecca Senf, who contributed the essay Torrance York’s Fabric of Light. I want the reader to experience the photographs, read the texts, and then revisit the images with new information. This way, the reader will have a chance to generate their response to the work and then later recognize where I was coming from. One magical aspect of shooting metaphorically is how the meaning of the images changes as we change through our life experiences. I still find new meaning and value in the photographs in the book even after working with them all this time.

For example, I photographed white tangrams positioned in an asymmetrical pattern to represent how I feel asymmetrical when I walk because of the slight drop foot I have developed from Parkinson’s. I intentionally used a porcelain set of tangrams to reference bones. What was not intentional, but pointed out to me by someone else, is that the pattern of the tangrams looks like an angel. For me, Semaphore is a gift that keeps on giving.

In the context of an exhibit where a selection of images has been curated for the viewer, the experience is different. The space at Rick Wester Fine Art gallery in which a dozen images were on the walls (half 20” images framed to 25” and half 13” framed to 18”) felt like a sanctuary with bright white walls and diffused light coming in through one window.For me, the experience of being in the space and surrounded by my photographs was akin to the power I feel from the images in the book that specifically picture light—but a 3-D rendition. My offering in an exhibit is only part of the story, but it is also an invitation to become immersed in the images and their dialogue.

BL: Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful project with us, Torrance!

Learn more about York’s Semaphore project and book on her website or to purchase a signed copy visit photo-eye’s website

Details:

• Essay by Rebecca Senf, PhD, Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
•Hardcover 21x24cm
• 96 pages
•67 color photographs
• $45