Susan Simone - Documentary Photography

Susan “Simone” : I am a documentary photographer who has been enticed into the world of photo collage. The documentary work grows out of my commitment to social justice.

The documentary projects began in January 1993. I was standing in the cold wind at a Martin Luther King Day march listening to UNC worker/organizers, when a friend said, “This story needs to be documented. Why don’t you make a video?” I said, “I don’t do video.” Famous last words: I did pick up oral history and blended it with photo documentary, working with the sound artist Jim Lee, to create “We Are All Housekeepers”.

My collage work tracks from glue to digital. Looking for a way to juxtapose past and present, people and place, I began to make multi-image pieces and to combine my photographs with photos from the archives at Wilson Library. A few years later, watching me labor over the pasting process in a project for Habitat for Humanity, my husband - more tech savy than I am – got me a copy of Photoshop (remember copies of software on disks?) and we loaded it up. So much for sequences of single images.

As Photoshop became more “robust” (or confusing), I was able to make my multi-image work more subtle and more complex. In 2000, we lived in Nepal for seven months where I met a Nepali poet, Manjul, who said, “Go take pictures. Bring them to me and I will write poems.” That invitation became “The People Who Live in Shangri-La”, a collection of poems and photo composites.

I should also confess that I have a doctorate in comparative literature, so I am intellectually and emotionally attached to narrative. But don’t worry. The dissertation focused on literature of the absurd, so my photographic narratives are filled with juxtapositions that entertain me visually. I hope the work is eye-catching with or without the back story.

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