Over four winters, Lisa M Robinson braved the cold to produce the series of photographs which make up her first book Snowbound. Familiar and everyday environments are transformed by the snow into alien, abstract and sometimes humourous vignettes suggesting the blurring of boundaries and borders; the snow-covered earth melts on the horizon into the sky, waterfalls are sculpted into inactive, monumental ice forms and unusual points of view compress space in evocative ways.
Presented in landscape format, at just under A3-size, Snowbound is a crisp package realised with a minimalist’s eye. The book cover comprises of two photographs, front and back, which dissolve seamlessly, at the spine, into each other. The front cover image Wish ostensibly foregrounds a metal bench set in a pristine snowscape as the main focus, but the way the horizon is capped by a veneer of ice blue sea, is what ultimately commands attention. For the back cover Emergence a photograph of a tree house provides a counterpoint to Wish whilst playing with perspective; at a glance, the structure appears as though it is on the ground behind the tree.
In each double-page spread, the photograph is placed on the right-hand page with the, mostly, one-word titles written in black on the left-hand page which is white. The effect is one whereby the words themselves become visual symbols free-floating in their own whiteness echoing signifiers in the images. Visual twists occur throughout the book. The explicit playfulness in photographs, such as Daydream depicting a brightly-coloured string hammock and At Rest of a trampoline covered with a dusting of snow, point to how the object’s recreational use has been transposed by snow but not swamped or buried by it.
Snowbound is a poetic book and the opening words and verses by Mark Strand are in keeping with the tone and feel of the project. The short texts by Celina Lunsford and the photographer are also in step with its quiet and pervasive emotion. Traces and their absence are recurring themes. In her foreword, Robinson reveals that she penetrated not only the worlds of snow and ice but also the realm of her images and the space of her mind. ‘These winters were periods of mourning for the loss of a dear friend. In this cold and quiet embrace, I learned that emptiness is not barren, that solitude is not lonely and that grandeur can be quite small,’ she writes.
The landscapes are not peopled but signs of human presence abound. A public phone booth appears incongruous amid a forest of elegant silver birch trees in the image titled Echo, as does what looks like a portaloo in Medusa. In Erasure, the asymmetric composition and flattening of perspective which is achieved through camera angle and an immaculate white tone, renders the image both quirky and beautiful.
The photograph of vertical posts cloaked in fur-like ice created by the water spray of waves and moulded by the elements into smooth strands conjure up visions of other-wordly terrains. Smudges of light lift the leaden sky and the single-word caption Valhalla perfectly captures the feel of the place as the entrance or last port of call between one dominion and another. And Veranda View with its repeated white vertical lines - the columns supporting the veranda, the metal railing and the trees in the background, which are rendered in soft tones ranging from white to dark grey, extends the range of Robinson’s monochromatic palette.
In order to collect these images Robinson had to endure sub-zero conditions in places where she sought the indexical signs of other people which provided some comfort and points of navigation in the limitless whiteness. The work is very much a personal journey and Robinson reveals that she casts her gaze back to what she has left behind. ‘It appears to be the same place where I began, though somehow different. And I realise that the difference lies not behind me or ahead of me, but within me,’ she concludes.
Snowbound is a thoughtful book devoid of pretension. It is seductive and seeps into one’s pores stirring a desire to return to its pages. Robinson transports the reader beyond the surface pleasures of the photographs and awakens a range of competing emotions from humour tinged with nostalgia to an aesthetic appreciation of the landscape which is underpinned by disbelief. The temporal nature of what it means to be human is also explored through various states of water and their undeniable elemental beauty. Snow and ice, and pools in Nocturne and Breathe, operate as metaphors for the changing human condition. With Christmas on the horizon and a Winter release, Snowbound is sure to leave its own mark.
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