Dana Stirling – Why Am I Sad – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

The photographs in Dana Stirling’s Why Am I Sad were taken in ten different states across the U.S., but they are not about the places they were taken. They are about the feelings of the photographer and her reaction to what she saw and her photographs document and catalogue moments of insight, recognition, and reaction.

Stirling’s inner mindscape is one of melancholy, sadness, and depression, and she has a tender eye for the forlorn, forgotten, worn down, discarded, and abandoned, along with exasperation at the insensitivity of the blithely cheerful.

Of the 62 images in the book nine are of annoyingly mindless smiley faces and some dozen are of lonely, run-down commercial signs, by turns broken, out of place, overly optimistic, meaningless, or no longer relevant. You also notice a number of dead animals – bees, deer, a bird, a mouse, a butterfly. You see a large stuffed teddy bear sitting by the side of the road, a street light missing its lamp covers, a bracelet left on a downspout, a hot dog fast food lunch for one person in a car with two seats, and a backyard swimming pool overgrown with brush. And you are struck by the roadside reflectors. In the first ten pages of the book there are three pictures of them, red dots that echo the ubiquitous smiley faces.

Woven seamlessly into views lifted from dozens of different contexts are a series of staged photographs. We see four small vintage portraits of a smiling woman (the photographer’s mother?) and then a similar photograph tucked into an envelope. There is a vase of badly wilted flowers, a small deer figurine tilted on its side, a baby doll in a glass jar, a hand holding a slide transparency of a girl, and a dozen dead bees. Suggesting death, distance, isolation, sadness, sorrow, and regret, they complement and reinforce the narrative.

Hovering around Why Am I Sad are questions concerning the nature of photography as a medium, including what determines the meaning of a photograph and how can a photograph contain the photographer’s intentions. The book is a reminder of the advantage of using the book form, including captions and text, as a vessel, given that the larger context gives purpose and direction to the individual images and helps clarify their meaning.

As a printed book Why Am I Sad is a handsome object, well printed and sequenced and satisfyingly tactile. Stirling’s accompanying text, Tinged with Sadness, unflinchingly explains her struggle with depression and poignantly resonates throughout the book.

Brave, honest, admirable, touching, heartfelt, and memorable – after looking at Why Am I Sad I won’t be able to see a smiley face without being reminded that not everybody is happy.

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Hans Hickerson, Associate Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

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Dana Stirling – Why Am I Sad

Photographer: Dana Stirling (lives in New York, born in Israel in 1989)

Language: English

Design: Kehrer

Hardbound printed uncoated cover; 60 color photographs; Swiss sewn binding; ISBN 978-3-96900-159-2; 110 pages; 8 X 9.5 in.

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.