'I am reaching out to you' by Anneka French

I am reaching out to
you
Anneka French
2020

Introduction
I am attempting to situate myself. This time, place, this set of contexts and histories with
varying impacts and legacies is dependent on subjectivity, self-hood, identity. I am
attempting to figure out what is going on, what is happening, where I am going, where
others might be going.
I am looking at writers that might help me to do this. And I am looking at incredible artists
too – tracing threads of connection to works by African-American artist Carrie Mae Weems
and by Israeli-American artist Elinor Carucci (if only in my mind) that will help, will
illuminate, will inspire. What might I learn from them? Photographs are helping me make
sense, make order, make memories and make plans
*
‘I am reaching out to you’ has always seemed to me to be an odd form of address in digital
correspondence. Its quasi-intimate phrasing has taken on a whole new meaning in recent
months, however, as social and physical distancing are doing strange things to families and
communities, and to our senses of time and space.
‘I am reaching out to you’ is a layered meditation on the pandemic period as I have
experienced it, in numerous ways from an acknowledged place of personal privilege. The
text is interwoven with memories, new poems, diary-like pieces and has eyes on the future.
Isolation, intimacy, parenthood, domesticity and family figure large.
These fragments are brought together with short reflections on intimate, domestic
photographs from Weems’ ‘The Kitchen Table Series’ (1990) and ‘Not Manet’s Type’ (1997),
alongside Carucci’s ‘Closer’ (1990s-2000s) and ‘Mother’ (2004-2012) series, as well as words
written or spoken by the artists themselves.

One of the things I cannot stop myself from doing is considering other artists. 1
1
Carrie Mae Weems in lecture at National Gallery of Art, 12 September 2015.

In considering the construction of archives, it is important to bear in mind that they are
devised by individuals with their own experiences, tastes, and biases. 2
2
Jamilla Prowse, Photoworks Annual 26, 2020, p. 26

October 2004
I picked up a book in Waterstones, Lincoln branch, in the tiny Art and Design section.
‘Closer’ by Elinor Carucci. I didn’t know what I was looking for, nor why (really), I was drawn
to this book. I knew nothing about photography. I had just moved away from my parents’
home in Birmingham, the only home I had known thus far, to start my BA in Fine Art. There
was exhilaration in freedom.
With hindsight, it would seem that my choice of book was a reaching back, a reaching out
for the cord that bound us three, though I didn’t know it at the time.
I can’t find the bloody book now. The more I look, the less I find. Reaching closer for ‘Closer’,
the further away I get.
I’m not sure if it is here or there. I have examined every inch of my office and turned over
places in my childhood bedroom where books still live. Dust in piles and hills. Squeezing my
body into places it can’t quite reach. Leafing through piles of child and teen partially intact,
flaking off, spilling out.

‘Closer’. That body of work is all about her family; Carucci’s parents in particular. The images
are sometimes uncomfortably intimate. They are often naked. Her husband features and
her brother. There are self-portraits too.
Sometimes you can’t get too close. Sometimes things are too painful to hold, to look at with
two eyes.

March 2020
I gorge myself on Instagram.
Little screens are not enough.
But they are better than nothing.

I can’t get to any galleries just now.

Weems reflects:
But I can always open a book. 3
3
Carrie Mae Weems in lecture at National Gallery of Art, 12 September, 2015.

Mum said to me as she drove me to the hospital for an eye examination:
“I think I am a better person since Charlie came along.
“I’m not sure I am”, I replied.

April 2018
I am going to die in a lift.
We are both going to die in a lift.
The world shrank down to a hospital and a room and a bed and an antenatal ward with Pop
Chips, slabs of macaroni cheese. There, I tried desperately not to give birth. It worked only
for 6 days.
The world shrunk to one of pain and terror and heat. Then opened up again at the sight of
you, born at 33+3.
It shrank down again to NICU rooms named Primrose and Bluebell and a bed next to your
plastic box.
Of course, it opened up again on our release only to find that your insatiable thirst meant
that venturing out was really rather difficult and should not have been advised.
But I was determined. I always am and anyway, I had lived in the hospital for almost four
weeks save the four nights I was sent home to sleep in my own bed. I inhaled the scent of
your worn baby grows like an addict.
On those four nights, away from the hospital, I had to set my alarm every 2 hours to pump
for 20 minutes. I worked each and every time during those 20 minutes. What an absolute
tit. I even worked while you slept next to me in your plastic box when I should have been
gazing and wondering at you or resting.

She was trying to be a good woman, a compadre, a pal, a living-doll and she was working.
How could he ask for more! 4
4
Carrie Mae Weems, The Kitchen Table Series: Text Sheet, 1990, letter press text panel

Some days I didn't cuddle you. They didn't tell me I could. I didn't ask. I was scared and knew
no better. I wanted to keep you safe.
They didn't tell me you were ok. I didn't know you were ok.

Charlotte Runcie talks about this diminishing landscape in the frenetic last chapters of ‘Salt
on my Tongue’, in the lead up to and aftermath of her daughter’s birth. She reflects:
Since she was born, my world has shrunk to the size of my living room, my bedroom, and
her dark blinking eyes looking up at me. 5
5
Charlotte Runcie, Salt on my Tongue, Cannongate Books, Edinburgh, 2020, p. 340

April 2020
Good morning. Hello. Did you have a nice sleep? What did you dream about?
Moon!
The moon?!
Gra!
You went to the moon with Gra?! How did you get there?
Car!
In the car?! What a lovely dream.
//
What did we see on our walk?
Cat!
Well, no, we didn’t see any cats today, did we. What did we see?
Bird.
We did see some birds today! What were the birds doing?
Sing.
They were singing, that’s right. Clever boy. What do you think they were singing about?
Moon.

Weems dedicated time, daily 6 , to crafting a narrative in words and in photographs in ‘The
Kitchen Table Series’. It was completed in 1990. It is a life on repeat – the same fixed
perspective, same kitchen table, same woman (Weems herself) – although other elements
vary. Lovers, friends, children, posters and artworks, meals and drinks, games, newspapers,
cigarettes, books, mirrors and makeup, clothes all alter. Tiny variations – things and people
– that make the monotony of home that bit more bearable.
Of course, what we don’t see is what’s outside each frame. We can’t see inside her mind
either.
6
“Every single day for months and months and months”. Carrie Mae Weems interviewed by Stephanie Eckardt
for W Magazine in 2016.

Some of this is echoed in Weems’ later body of work ‘Not Manet’s Type’. It is equally
exquisite, perhaps more so in its clear dialogue with the canon of art history that has for too
long favoured certain bodies over others, especially in relation to race and class, and framed
bodies of certain genders and shapes in problematic ways. Here too, we see a tightly framed
Black body, isolated this time, in a bedroom setting in the reflection of the same circular
mirror. Over and over.

I think it’s important to acknowledge my own selfhood and how it influences my research
practices. What are the key factors that steer my eye towards some works more than
others? 7
7
Jamilla Prowse, Photoworks Annual 26, 2020, p. 27

May 2020
We three are in the garden shed and the green house, the new-old veg patch archaeological
dig. We are on the lawn and the patio table. We are in the living room and dining room (we
sort of swapped them around) which is also an office, the playroom-office, the mouldy
kitchen or upstairs in his room, our room, teetering on the stool in the bathroom washing
his hands or in the future nursery- (I hope) office. Or else we are taking a short walk around
the block, trying to hurry along nap time before it interferes with bed time.
We are in Pontypandy and Greendale often. Sometimes in Peter’s wood or Pooh’s. I know
several off your favourite books off by heart.
I am getting quite good at banana loaf (don’t forget the chocolate pieces, Anneka, or to
warm the butter first) but losing my patience more and more. With work, with a lack of mespace
and me-time, with the pressures of making every meal for us and trying to make him
eat it. To stop him throwing it on the floor. Again. “Throw!!” he says with relish. I am stuck
and trapped and blessed and safe and anxious and driven and squashed and needed.
I have stopped thinking about make-up or jewellery. I haven’t worn them since sometime in
March but I guess I was never a high-maintenance type anyway. Rob might say otherwise. I
have stopped walking loads, stopped running for trains, stopped popping out on my
lunchbreak and stopped spending my wages on takeaway coffee from Java Lounge.
I have started buying art works again and thinking about making art again. About writing.
I’m writing right now. Write now. I have started to feel more comfortable about being an
artist; about being a poet and being with words. Having a practice that’s mine. I have started
furiously applying for every opportunity at every moment I get so that I can store up nuts for
the winter ahead.
The roses have opened. Even Gertrude Jekyll (who did nothing last year or the year before
that). The clematis has finished but I got our annual photo. Three years now of the possum
and I by the clematis montana archway. He pulled the petals of the poppies and the pansies.
“What have you been doing in the green house with Dadda, Charlie?” “Grow!!” he says with
glee. And Rob has gone mad on growing. Growing everything. He’s working up to a market
garden business, I think. When he’s not actually growing – tenderly nurturing his green
babies – he’s watching YouTube videos on growing by Irishmen and Geordies. There are few
things he is not growing by way of fruit and veg. We ate the first four ripe strawberries
today in the sunshine. The tomatoes are on their way. There are thirty-nine tomato plants
growing. We are going to need a bigger freezer for all that pasta sauce. I shall have to
consult an Italian for the best way to keep it jarred.
We have all but stopped plane spotting. We have started looking for cats. The bloody cats
(Elvin and Melvin) that he loves come round sometimes to poop in our bushes, beds and
borders. We have started bird and bee and butterfly spotting instead and have cut down on
woodlouse evictions. We leave the windows open. We’ve moved him down 1.5 togs in his
sleeping bag. It is pale blue with schools of yellow fish. It will probably be the last one he

ever wears, for a bed won’t be too far off when the weather cools.
I have stopped my meds and started itching.
We have sundried washing every load. It smells so good. We have Magnums. “Small bit,”
Charlie says, amongst other things. There are so many two-word phrases now. I’ve been
writing about them.
We are never far from home though it’s not a home without more of us. Without Nanna and
Gra to keep us company and to take care. Us three, wishing we were five or even six. I have
started to feel more ready for a change.

Photographing my mother was the experience that made me hooked on photography – how
much more I was able to see in her and to see in me and just to see in the rest of the family.
Eventually, I just felt, I can see much more with a camera. 8
8
Elinor Carucci, interview with The Photographer’s Gallery, 2013

A fat bottom lip figures in ‘Bruised Mouth’ (2007). I’m not sure if it is Eden’s lip or
Emanuelle’s for Carucci doesn’t tell us. But I know what that feels like. That angry, out of
place sore spot, either accidental or the result of boisterous play, although I’m guessing of
course We see this bruised lip in excruciating detail. Blood vessels, every hair, a freckle on
the top lip. I want to kiss it better. It is beautiful.
‘Kissing my Son’ (2007) – I know that feeling too. Carucci almost looks as though she is
whispering in Eden’s ear, lipstick ready to smudge on skin again and again. He has chocolate
smeared around his mouth. And a vacant look in his eye tells me he is watching TV. If he’s
anything like my son of late, far too much TV.

June 2020
Blue crayon, broken in half
Waits patiently for him
To declare ‘Char do draw’
Gra’s cheap sports watch
Comes off his wrist
To ear
Tick Tick
Spiralled, swirling, glittered marbles
That will never leave the museum gift shop.
I knew I should have bought them at the time.

I have a scar on my face. My son calls it ‘moth’.

Everything is a dialogue or at least it should be.

Weems says:
You help me to discover the breadth of me and I help you to discover the breadth of you. 9
9
Carrie Mae Weems in interview with National Gallery of Art, 12 September, 2015.

Pond fish relocation
Cherry tree mutilation

He pissed all over my lap and I caught his vomit in my hands in the car.

I was performing for myself and claiming space regardless of where I was. Whether I’m out
in the world standing in front of a museum or in my kitchen, it is the same determination to
have the body speak loudly and quietly. 10
10
Carrie Mae Weems, Elephant Magazine, Issue 42, 2020, p. 150

July 2020
Nanna and Gra came to visit today. They are allowed in the garden now.
Nanna quite randomly announced that she felt as though she would like to cartwheel on the
grass. She didn’t. But instead played a form of hockey with Charlie using a faded pink plastic
ball and her hospital walking stick. She claims to have not been very good at hockey at
school but I know otherwise.
Conversations were had about which of us could do cartwheels. None of us could. But Rob
could do a gambol, he said. And he did – an awkward gangly gambol with his long limbs
which sends me springing back to what I imagine his childhood or teen attempts might have
been – self-conscious and not entirely in full control of the length of his arms and legs.
Unsure of their use. Then he did another one.
My own effort was cautious, uncertain. I threw myself over with a quick tuck, in and out.
Pleased, I cockily tried another gambol and abruptly veered off course by 90 degrees.
Thankfully the lawn was relatively forgiving. The rush of the tumble reminded me of the joy
of physical movement, of abandoning myself, of seeing the world with upside down eyes,
even if only for a moment. I still have grass in my hair.
The biggest surprise came from Gra. Charlie called “Gra do” and I made an excuse, saying
that jeans weren’t very forgiving for a gambol. But to our pure unexpected delight, Gra
crouched down and did a very fast, neat, perfect gambol. No fuss, no muss, no build up,
almost as if we had imagined it. Gra, the confident, handsome, sporty lad who’s still inside,
who makes dens for Charlie and has bottomless reserves of energy, patience, kindness and
imagination for him. His gambol will be a memory I treasure forever.

He said “I love you” today, the 9 th . Well, “I love” but that’s close enough.
//
close lean in
//
hug.

I don’t always know what I’m doing. I’m often lost and struggling through a process and a
set of ideas and emotions that I don’t understand. Sometimes it takes me years to really
understand what I’ve done. And that’s why it’s important to get out of the way of the
work. 11
11
Carrie Mae Weems in interview with National Gallery of Art, 12 September, 2015.

Yes. Sounds good. But how to get out of the way?

I looked for you on Bluebird Lane
And in my book and mind’s eye.
I looked for the zip marks on your skin
And measured a big circle to take it all in:
The expanse of a woman with a camera,
A woman with a daughter by her side.
I looked for you in an envelope
And a smash of glass,
A smile and a self-portrait.
I couldn’t find you in the mirror
Or in a sweat-stained sports bra.
I looked for trouble,
And found you in tiny toes, tourniqueted.
I looked for you, little lion,
And found a woman at a kitchen table,
And again I found her with a child,
Intimate in eye and ear
With a man with no name.
I looked for you in crumpled bed sheets
And in soil and rock and gem,
In Dutch, Latin and Danish.
I looked in a story and in a hole,
In an email
And in a flash of lightning that disabled everything.
I looked, looped again, elastic,
In an old wardrobe.
I chopped it up for firewood.
I climbed a ladder,
Pinched your cheeks,
Pulled your hair
And looked you in the eye, unflinching.
I looked at the robustness of youth
And through open doors,
In wet compost,
In vulnerability,
In a bright silver stream,
Puddling on pavement,
In photographs
And postcards
On Amazon and eBay,
In libraries and shuttered doors.
I’m looking.
I’m always looking.

A photograph exists of Rob’s grandfather, Charlie, as a young man at around twenty years
old. He looks bizarrely, unfathomably, eerily, exactly like Rob. The photograph would have
been taken circa 1934, possibly in Margate, at around the time he met his wife, Rob’s
grandmother.
I continue to look for inter-generational traces of connection.

Mer-maid
Half-made
Powdered potatoes
Crumpled pillowcases
And grips with hairs stuck in them.
Records, diaries of things to do
But nowhere to go.
Lego everywhere
And cars with eyes and teeth.
Design your own fantastic hat
Inspired by your favourite animal.
Instate her as Interim Director
Pull her up / push her down
See if she sinks.
Wooden birds at the window
Tomatoes with rotten bottoms
And dangling beans
Be brave – give it some length.
Mer-maid
Half-made
In sand and sea
And hotel bedrooms
Half-made sandwiches
Half-a-job Jane
With a golden pencil
And salt-whipped hair
Mer-made in a fire and a forge
Houses of straw
And bubble brine
Dissolving.

Rust-eze Cruz Ramirez in the cup holder of a Skoda Yeti.

Whatever I write would be a paper doll compared to my real mother. 12
12
Edan Lepucki, Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them, Abrams Image:
New York, 2020, p.9

There once was a little girl who
had tiger slippers
and a ceiling with stars on it
and a butterfly hairslide
which she kept losing
and two goldfish
and a nice mother who helped
her to make some paper dolls. 13
13
Julia Donaldson and Rebecca Cobb, The Paper Dolls, Macmillan: London, 2012

I plucked a seed from your mattress.

And a speck of earwax.

When I put news of this bursary on Instagram, two artists reached out to me. One told me
that she had had dinner in Weems’ home in Syracuse in 2004. Apparently she has a
Victorian tin-tiled ceiling in her Brownstone. She was generous and kind and charismatic.
Another told me that her friend had photographed Carucci. Professionally, I mean.

Why did you originally decide to put yourself in the photos, since the series wasn’t
specifically about you?
Because I was the only person around. It really is true. I work often and a lot, and in this
case, sometimes I would work at six in the morning or three in the afternoon. I was just
simply available. 14
14
Carrie Mae Weems interviewed by Stephanie Eckardt for W Magazine in 2016.

August 2020
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To: You
Hello,
We're still trying to obtain the item(s) which you ordered on June 26 2020 in Order# 202-
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Carrie Mae Weems "Kitchen Table Series"
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What are you digging for? Treasure?
Hm.
What treasure are you looking for?
Pom Bears.
What can Woody see today?
Trees.
Trees. What else can Woody see.
Blue sky.
Blue sky!
Buzz fly up up. Pooh Bear Gra eat honey in garden.

Oh yeah, she loved the kid, was responsible, but took no deep pleasure in motherhood, it
caused deflection from her own immediate desires, which pissed her off. Ha. A woman’s
duty? Ha! A punishment for Eve’s sin was more like it. Ha. 15
15
Carrie Mae Weems, The Kitchen Table Series: Text Sheet, 1990, letter press text panel

September 2020
Her little lion lifeforce
purrs and stirs,
rolls over,
as she reaches for her white tin bucket.
No golden pears today,
just bile and vomit.

How can this be happening again? I can’t do it.

Carucci’s images make motherhood idyllic – well as idyllic as anything can be with blood and
snot and shouting. Rather, it is the synthesis of her work and her motherhood which looks
so appealing, so fruitful, so easy, though I bet it’s not really. Still, it’s something to strive
toward and even if boundaries are blurred, it’s got to be better than what I’m doing.

A miniature wave captured.
A perfect moment in grainy monochrome, all liquid and alien.
Much clearer this time.
In a mask.

Carucci reminds:
I think we haven’t seen enough about the complexity of parenthood, especially maybe of
motherhood. 16
16
Elinor Carucci, interview with The Photographer’s Gallery, 2013

‘Taste’ (2008) captures Eden in a moment of silly bliss, his pink protruding tongue licking
Carucci’s hand. She looks down on him, offering herself to him, with her other hand around
her shoulders.

It’s what we do.

Charlie likes to lick the tip of my nose sometimes when we are in bed. Or maybe it’s a kiss?
He says it tastes like fruit loaf.

It took a few years for the photographer and the mother in me to learn to coexist. The two
did not always agree; the mother in me usually won out. But sometimes, to my surprise, my
two identities empowered each other … 17
17
Elinor Carucci, MOTHER, Prestel, Munich, 2013, introduction.

October 2020
Enough. Enough now.

With thanks to Ania Bas, Amelia Hawk, Bharti Parmar, Mitra Saboury and Anna Souter for
invaluable conversations.
Special thanks to my family. Always.
Commissioned by GRAIN Projects, 2020.