Molly Lamb: Behind the Lens 2020

My photographs are a contemplation of my family history and how it permeates my being, my experiences, and my perspectives. This work has evolved into four series of photographs, each coupled with poems: Ghost Stepping, Let it Go, Take Care of Your Sister, and Before the Trees. Each series is a separate chapter in this ongoing narrative about the geography of loss, family history, and family future.

Molly Lamb holds an MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a BA in American Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her work has been exhibited nationally, most recently at Rick Wester Fine Art, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Danforth Art Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Photographic Resource Center. In 2016, she was selected for the Critical Mass Top 50 and in 2015, she was named one of Photo District News’ 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch as well as one of LensCulture’s 50 Emerging Talents.

My first recollection of inheriting the belongings of someone in my family is when I was five years old. Consistently, throughout the years since, I have inherited the belongings of most of my family. This history permeates my experiences and perspectives, and it also now ends with my life. When I pass away, all that I hold dear – my stories, my belongings, and those of my family – will dissolve into a world that does not speak the language of our nuances.

My contemplation of this history has evolved into four separate chapters of photographs, each coupled with poems: Ghost Stepping, Let it Go, Take Care of Your Sister, and Before the Trees.

Take Care of Your Sister is a meditation on the emotional resonance of loss, family history, and family future through the land –
a landscape that is grounded in reality yet also distorted through time and displacement. It meanders through memories in the Mississippi Delta where my father grew up and where my brother and I spent time with our grandparents when we were very young.

When my father was a child there, he was asked to take care of his younger sister.
When I was a child, the last words my father said to my brother were, “Take care of your sister.”

Moths circling and circling
uneasy yellow light
suspended
in speckled black
below the stars
and cicada silence.
Strong wind on the bridge –
dirt in the air, in my hair,
in the shades of darkness
where the light laps against
the water’s whirling
solid,
where they caught
moths
when they were young.
That is not cotton.
He is not him.
Fields
rows
divides
dirt
cracks
where there is no rain.
Thick summer
clings to my skin
quietly urging
its way into my bones.
Ghosts in my eye
under the shroud cry
leave me here no more.