Lara Shipley, a woman to watch, looks right back at you

Lara Shipley is humbler than she ought to be. The photographer has had an auspicious year — teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute, launching her own press and, most recently, securing a place in the National Museum of Women in the Arts’ Women to Watch exhibition.

Now, before she makes the trek to Washington, D.C., the Epsten Gallery shows her work as part of its own Women to Watch: 2015 (Women, Nature & Art). The theme seems ideal for Shipley, whose photographs dwell at the uneasy intersection of rural communities, dwindling economic opportunities and the motives that impel small-town residents — often women — to stay.

In advance of her exhibition at the Epsten, The Pitch visited Shipley’s midtown studio, which is also her apartment. The space feels a little like Shipley herself: careful but cozy, unfussy yet refined. A stack of plastic-wrapped prints rests neatly on top of a flat file in the corner; on the table in front of us, she has arranged three gold-embossed volumes of the Spook Light Chronicles, a photo-book series that she self-published with collaborator Antone Dolezal. It’s these books, culled from The Devil’s Promenade, a series of photos from the Ozarks, which seem closest to her heart.

The Pitch: What photos did you choose for the Epsten exhibition?

Shipley: It’s all pictures from The Devil’s Promenade series. And I worked with the curator, Heather [Lustfeldt], to make those selections. Especially since I’m self-publishing, I kind of like to give up control when I can, let someone else find something new.

What drove your decision to self-publish?

I’m really interested in photography-writing collaborations. Right now, I think writing and photography have a tricky relationship where photography tends to be more illustrative of writing. I’m interested in experimenting with the way that they’re traditionally paired, and thinking about ways that photography and writing can coexist without the writing explaining what the photographs are. Or the photographs illustrating or “proving” the text.

So I started Search Party Press. I printed these with my collaborator, and I’m going to start publishing other artists. It’s been a dream for a long time, but I kind of wanted to try things out on myself first before I was like, “I’m going to print your book. I don’t know how.”

You’ll primarily print other photographers?

I’m open, but I’m really interested in getting the kind of work out there, especially photography, that I don’t always see in galleries. There’s just so much amazing work — some of it a little bit challenging — that can be difficult for an emerging artist to get into more established spaces.

The Devil’s Promenade has a lot of portraits. Did you know your subjects or did you get to know them through taking their portraits?

Definitely through taking their portraits. I always want to be pretty open about what I’m doing. People are like, “Why are you hanging around our small town?” But I have this camera. It’s an older camera, a Hasselblad. It’s like a big metal box, so people approach me wondering what that’s all about. A great way to meet people is just sticking out.

Do you encounter skepticism when you ask to take someone’s portrait? Are people worried about the narratives you might construct around them?

Not really. I tell people that I want to photograph them for a project about the place they’re from. It’s about the place, or my perspective of the place. Even though I’m from the Ozarks, I don’t really want to claim any sort of understanding, or at least total understanding, of what that place is.

So it’s not really about individuals, and I want it to be that way because people are extremely complicated. I don’t really like this idea that you can capture someone with a portrait. I think that can be very deceptive. Portraits are a surface. An expression can change in fractions of a second. So what you get is partly them, but it’s also partly me. I think of myself and the way I’m working now as if I were writing a novel or making a movie based on something real. I feel like I’m a storyteller.

Did you go into that project knowing the story you wanted to tell?

It’s a little bit different with Devil’s Promenade because I’m from there, so I had more preconceived feelings about what I would find. But I guess that’s what I felt it was about: our human relationship to location and how we try to identify with a place. But it’s such a personal experience. It’s not a fixed identity.

You’ve written about being drawn to portraiture for the “permission as a woman to stare.” What do you mean by that?

I feel more aware of being a woman when I’m making photographs than I do in my other interactions with the world. I don’t know if I totally understand why that is, but it’s something about being out of the comfort zone of our community. Since I tend to work in other people’s communities, maybe I’m just more aware of how I’m perceived because I’m a stranger. But I also think there’s something really basic about it. There are certain ways that women are taught to interact with the world, and being really engaging with strangers doesn’t fall into that. And it can sometimes cause confusion, and sometimes the attention can be a bit threatening.

So it’s a risk.

There’s a certain amount of care you have to take. Making someone’s portrait is an intimate experience. You know, I don’t take a quick snap. It’s an hour sometimes, posing people in different places. I think that helps people relax, helps me relax. The pictures are better when I take my time. But this permission for a woman — or, really, for anyone — to stare at someone else they don’t know very well is really unusual in our culture.