An intimate focus
BY JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Apr 6, 2008
4/06/08 at 1:40 AM
Daughter’s camera follows Lynn Redgrave’s battle with cancer
One of the last things most
people would bring to a hospital
is a camera.
However, Annabel Clark and
her mother, Lynn Redgrave,
have spent a good portion of
their lives on both sides of a camera
— Redgrave in her acclaimed
career as an actress; Clark as a
photographer.
And when Redgrave was
diagnosed with breast cancer in
December 2002, Clark said picking
up her camera “was just an
immediate instinct.”
“Once I got over the initial
shock of my mother telling me
the news, I thought of creating a
document of the process, just to
help me take it all in,” Clark said,
during a telephone conversation.
“It all happened so suddenly
— she was going in for surgery
two weeks after the diagnosis.”
But Clark also thought having
a camera with her would be as
much a help to her mother as to
herself.
“In fact, she brought up the
idea herself, almost as soon as it
came to me,” Clark said. “She
thought my making this a project
would help take my mind off
what she was going through. The
camera lens could act as a kind
of fi lter for both of us.”
That idea would slowly grow
into a book and exhibit titled
“Journal: A Mother and Daughter’s
Recovery From Breast Cancer.”
The exhibit, which includes
Clark’s photographs along with
excerpts from Redgrave’s diaries,
is now on display in the gallery
of the Tulsa Performing Arts
Center.
It is being shown in conjunction
with Redgrave’s appearance
Tuesday in her one-woman play
“Nightingale,” which is being
presented in Tulsa under the
auspices of the Oklahoma Center
for Poets and Writers.
“Nightingale” is the third play
Redgrave has written — all of
which deal with members of her
famous family. “Shakespeare
for My Father,” written in 1993,
was Redgrave’s portrait of her
relationship with her father Sir
Michael Redgrave. It was followed
in 2001 by “The Mandrake
Root,” which was loosely based
on her mother, Rachel Kempson.
“Nightingale” was inspired
by Redgrave’s memories of her
maternal grandmother, Beatrice,
a woman she never got to know
well. Redgrave said she went
looking for her grandmother’s
gravestone, only to find its surface
dissolved to anonymity by
acid rain.
“So I’ve given her a new
name,” Redgrave said of the
play when it debuted in 2006.
“And I’ve dreamed up a life. A
memorial. For no one dies who is
remembered.”
Clark said “Journal” is
something of a continuation of
this tradition of exploring the
Redgrave family through words
and images.
“There has always been an
exploration of family in my
mother’s writing, that sense of
knowing where you came from,”
Clark said. “The family tree on
my mother’s side goes back to
the 1600s. So I’ve always been
aware of the connection to family
and history.
“That made doing this project
a little easier to do,” she said.
“Because it was very, very close
to home.”
Even so, Clark began to photograph
her mother in all phases
of the ordeal — laughing before
surgery, drawn and haggard immediately
after, the drains to help
the scars heal, the chemotherapy
and radiation therapy, the loss of
hair, the struggle to regain physical
strength.
Amidst all this were the joys
and tragedies of family life
— reunions with siblings, the
loss of a parent and grandparent
(Redgrave’s mother, Rachel
Kempson, died in May 2003).
The images are occasionally
disturbing in their intimacy, the
emotional nakedness as much as
the physical toll cancer and its
treatment takes on the human
body.
Still, Clark said, the unflinching
gaze of the camera proved to
be as therapeutic for Redgrave as
well as herself.
“I would bring her the contact
sheets of the photos I was taking,
and she found these helpful in a
way,” Clark said. “Especially
when she was losing her hair
because of the chemotherapy.
She found it very difficult to
look in the mirror, but she
could look at herself in the
photographs. She’d say things
like, ‘What an interesting composition,’
things like that. It
was a way for her to step back
from herself, in a way.”
Clark was finishing up her
senior year studying photography
at the Parsons School of
Design when her mother was
diagnosed with cancer. She at
first thought the photographs
she was making of her mother
were too intimate to serve as
the senior thesis she had to
prepare.
“But I didn’t want to divide
my attention by working on
something that would be less
meaningful,” she said. “So I
talked with my mother about
this being my thesis, which
would mean sharing these pictures
with others, and she was
really open to that.”
Part of the thesis project
was a mock-up of a book version
of the photographs, with
entries from Redgrave’s diary
serving as text.
“I knew my mother had kept
a diary since she was a kid,
and I knew she was writing
about the
experience,”
Clark
said. “I
asked if I
could use
excerpts
that she
would select.”
When publishers expressed
interest in the book, Clark and
Redgrave expanded the scope
to include the six months of
chemotherapy Redgrave endured,
so that the book would
chronicle a year.
“That’s when my mother
said, ‘Just take my journal and
use what you want. I trust
you,’ ” Clark said. “For me,
that was maybe the most incredible
thing—for her to
share every thought and private
feeling she had.”
Clark now works as a freelance
photographer, whose
images have appeared in the
New York Times Magazine,
the Observer Weekend magazine,
American Photography
and Proto magazine. She has
also served as the stills photographer
on a number of independent
films.
The “Journal” show has
been exhibited twice before —
at the Beth Israel Medical
Center School of Nursing in
New York City, and the Minnesota
Center for Photography
in Minneapolis.
“But Tulsa will be the first
time we’ve had this show on
display in a theater where my
mother is performing,” Clark
said.
James D. Watts Jr. 581-8478
james.watts@tulsaworld.com
preview
"JOURNAL: A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER'S RECOVERY FROM BREAST CANCER," PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT BY ANNABEL CLARK"
When
Through April 27. Hours are 10 a.m.
to 5:30 p.m., and during all Chapman
Music Hall Events
Where
Gallery, Tulsa Performing Arts Center,
Third Street and Cincinnati Avenue
Tickets
Admission is free
preview
"NIGHTINGALE," ONE-WOMAN SHOW WRITTEN BY AND STARRING LYNN REDGRAVE
When
7 p.m. Tuesday
Where
Williams Theater, Tulsa Performing Arts
Center, Second Street and Cincinnati
Avenue
Tickets
$30, available at the PAC Ticket Office,
596-7111, and online at www.tulsaworld.
com/myticketoffice
Associated Images:
Lynn Redgrave’s journey through cancer is chronicled in “Journal,” an exhibit of photographs made by her daughter, Annabel Clark (right). Redgrave will be in TulsaTuesday to perform a one-woman play inspired by her own grandmother, called “Nightingale.”
Clark
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