Helen Rosemier – Zones of Possibility

Review by Gerhard Clausing •

This artistic photobook gives you the impression of looking through a universal family album that encompasses more than your immediate surroundings. It gives you a look into the past that seems like an ambiguous societal cross section, a composite view with many personal nuances. Not only that, but photographs printed as postcards are inserted periodically; these can be rearranged at will and inserted at other points in the sequence. Such original touches in the design allow the viewer to participate and make this project very personal. We can assess and reassess both the content and the pacing of the book. Most importantly, we can also consider any parallels to our own lives, if we choose to do so, and if we are willing to find out whether such parallels exist.

Helen Rosemier had to isolate herself, as we all did, during the time of the pandemic. Thus she had much time to contemplate both her own family history as well as many examples of family and “found” photography that she had collected. The result is a photobook full of ambiguity. We see forms of nature, interspersed with a variety of portraits, including even an old pinup postcard simulation, and a variety of vacation pictures showing people in the summer and in the winter. Oftentimes the faces are obscured, but even when we see their faces, the persons are not known to us specifically. The pin-up postcard recurs later in the book with the face not shown in the reproduction, as a sample of instances allowing us to project: What are we looking at? Is this the ambiguity of life that we cannot escape? Is this a mirror of our soul?

At one point, as shown in images 5 and 6 below, the author includes a simulation of a torn page, which can be turned to also obscure part of the previous page. The backgrounds are mostly dark and possibly project a feeling of sadness or gloom. As we proceed in the sequence, Rosemier gradually introduces a modest amount of color, both in the backgrounds and in some of the images. Is this possibly a small sign of hope? The cover of the book has a soft-touch coating, which adds a sort of touchy pleasantness, to soften the presentation a little bit perhaps. The mixture of a variety of family photographs, combined with ambiguous and dreamy pictures of nature, give the sequence a universal impact, of something somewhat incomplete, and at the very least many starting points for self-contemplation.

Not just due to the pandemic, but also because of certain political developments, much has been thrown at us lately that challenges the progress of our history and that possibly also endangers our future. Therefore a project like this one is highly welcome: it makes us ponder what we are about, what we can endorse, what we can endure, where we have come from, and where we are going. As Rosemier says in the her postscript, “fragments of reality meet memory and imagination, where there is no certainty or truth, where fact and fiction are blurred. The past is not fixed, as time transfigures meaning. Between presence and absence there are zones of possibility.” Well demonstrated, indeed!

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Many thanks to Doug Stockdale for some of the ideas and for the images.

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Gerhard Clausing, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is an author and artist from Southern California.

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Helen Rosemier – Zones of Possibility

Photographers: Helen Rosemier (lives in London, UK)

Texts: Helen Rosemier; petry by Julian Dobson

Language: English

Photobook Design: Lisa Ferron

Softbound with cover images; 106 pages, unnumbered, with inserts; 9.75 x 7 inches (25 x 17.5 cm); printing by Cambrian Printers Ltd; first edition of 250; ISBN 978-1-7384356-0-9

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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.