When images combine with words - Donna Tramontozzi long remembers

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Sometimes words aren't enough.

That was the case for my dear friend and fellow writer, Donna Tramotozzi. She and I worked together back in the olden days at Digital Equipment, she a very senior consultant and me a very junior one. After that we were in a writing group together and I was mesmerized by the short pieces Donna turned out, heartbreaking work as she tried to put into words what she'd experienced when over the course of two decades she lost four brothers to premature death.

Along the way, Donna started to take photographs, and then to become even more serious as a photographer than she was as a writer. Her pictures, combined with words, at last, enabled her to express her sadness.

Donna has just published a brilliant book of her photographs and memories. LONG REMEMBERINGS OF GOODBYES is gorgeous, simply gorgeous. And heartbreaking, of course. The images complement the thoughts and vice versa.

The cover of the book is haunting... and hints at what readers will find within.

Recently, the fine art daily LENSCRATCH reviewed Donna's book. 

Long Rememberings of Goodbyes, is a profound effort to honor and revisit some of the darkest days of her life. As a young woman growing up in a large Catholic family in Boston, her life was put on hold over and over as the losses mounted. It’s a kind of grief that remains under the surface, but is ever present. Now Tramontozzi brings these memories into focus with a book that uses the natural world as sanctuary, as a place to land, in all its remarkable beauty. When combined with personal text, she creates a powerful and deeply felt journey into the fragile past.

I love that phrase: "uses the natural world as sanctuary."

I am so pleased to be able to host Donna here today. I asked her to talk about her book and how photographs and phrases combine in her work to a single artform. 

DONNA TRAMONTOZZI: My book, Long Rememberings of Goodbyes, is a reflection on the memories of the premature deaths of my four brothers.

I had written about my brothers in the 80’s and 90’s when they died, but ultimately I stopped before getting to any final format. Last year before I produced my book, I decided to clarify what kind of format I wanted those reflections to take before I started. 

I returned to those original pieces and was shocked at how much I had forgotten. That was my first lesson on how memories merge and change with time’s passage. Oddly, at the same time, some events were as clear as the day they happened.

What was it about those events? They still had the same strong emotional impact on me.

With those two observations in mind, I realized I needed new writing. The writing needed to be like my current memories — snippets, no background explanation, brief emotional scenes. I wanted to compress each memory down to its essence. It turned out that “brief” also allowed me to be in that moment, capture it and move on. I could write in the same way I remembered.

Most writers know the fear of the blank page, but I stopped writing because I just couldn’t stay in that sad place. Instead, I turned to photography with nature as my subject. Taking images while hiking was my solace. Getting into the zone where everything disappeared except taking the photo and experiencing the natural beauty became the way I survived their deaths. 

I knew from the beginning that my book would be text and images. What kind of images was my dilemma. Images of them? Images of absence? Neither of those felt right to me.

Besides the fact I wanted to use images, I knew there was a need for them. When early reviewers read the writing, they said they needed a rest to absorb the text. “Even a blank page would work,” someone said. It would have, but the images had other purposes. 

I also wanted the book to have an arc to it. Beginning, climax, end. The images needed to reflect that arc. Lastly, the feeling of the images needed to reinforce the feeling of the text, not to explicate, but to echo the same feeling. 

I tried lots of images without success until I realized, “Write what you know,” works for other arts. 

My photography subject was nature, so the images for the book should be of nature. 

Last winter I took some images of translucent ice on the lake where we summered as children. The images were abstract, unusual and I loved them. 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure how to talk about them so I asked a smart friend. Phrases like “form of suspended stardust” and “searching the universe to provide a sense of solace and connection” pointed the way towards metaphor. 

Metaphor.

The arts share so much.

Last spring, I found myself in a Memorial Cypress Grove in Point Lobos, California. I felt like I was in a memorial grove and once I came across some algae growing on the cypress trees, I knew I had the images I needed to echo the most emotional writing in the book. An algae that attached to the cypresses, changing the trees, but not killing them. Kismet?

HALLIE: The book is, as I said, simply gorgeous. It can be purchased at https://www.dtramontozzi.com/11657038-about-copy.

Donna's journey got me thinking about times in my life when words just weren't up to the healing I needed. If I were a photographer with Donna's eye and artistry, shadows would be my ice and algae.

What about you?