06.18.2020
Context
Ten days before my final review, I emailed everyone on my review panel to ask if I could mail them photographs.
Eight days before my review, I mailed each panelist an envelope of prints.
Six days before my review, the photographs arrived at the panelists’ houses and I uploaded a statement onto box.
Sincerely,
Sadie Cook
04.06.2020
Letter to panelist (Henk)
Hi Henk,
This is Sadie. I’m the undergrad photo student who sometimes talks to you in the hallway.
I just learned you are filling in for Julian on my thesis panel next week and I’m excited to show you the things I get up to.
I’ve been talking to my advisor and decided to ask those of you on my panel if it would be okay for me to mail you a small envelope of prints. It is so important to me that my pictures are interacted with bodily in some way. Could I give you some prints? Is there somewhere I could send them?
I’ve been test printing and editing from Walgreens and can mail the envelopes without touching them or the envelope.
I hope you and your family are well and safe,
From: Sadie
04.11.2020
Group email to panelists
Dear Everybody On My Panel,
Thank you so much for letting me send you prints!
Today, most of the pictures should have arrived. On Wednesday, I will upload my complete statement and book/wall layout/work onto box. I uploaded a draft of a statement onto box, as a sort of offer of context for those who might want it.
I hope you all are doing okay and I’m excited to talk to you on Friday,
From: Sadie
4.11.2020
Statement
Today, I texted my friend part of an essay:
If I, for instance, want to tell you that a man I loved, who died, said he loved me on a curbstone in the snow, but this occurred in time after he died, and before he died, and will occur again in the future, I can't say it grammatically.
You would think I was talking about a ghost, or a hallucination, or a dream, when in fact, I was trying to convey the experience of a certain event as scattered, and non-sequential.
....
In so many senses making these spiral, or serial, poems is very close to dream-construction, where we collect pieces of most and emotionally charged moments and see how they interact, outside of the usual story-like narrative. And ultimately I see the whole body of work as existing all but untitled and without beginning or end, an explosion of parts, the quotidian smeared.
--Fanny Howe, Bewilderment
When I read this, I sat bolt upright. “But this is photography!” I thought, “Smeared quotidian! Yes!”
Sometimes, I stand on the toilet in my bathroom so I can see my whole body in the mirror above the sink and pose like the pink picture of my bruises and track the changes in my appearance. I’m paler now. I’m thinner. My hipbones stick out a little and there are three long hairs beneath my belly button and a big space between my legs and two new piercings and a small pink scar. I like that I look different. The differences make it feel true that that picture is in the past. But I’ve done this so often that that picture is ingrained in my muscle memory. I fall into the pose so easily--arms up, twist to the left, right leg forward.
For me, right now, everything is about touch. I look at two trees twisted together and think about the space between people. I look at plastic wrap and think about the separation of air, the allowance for touch without actual contact.