Paige Kutchka: I read the things you sent me and you said that you grew up in the 80s and where did you grow up?
Brandy Hill: I grew up in Victoria, Texas.
PK: You’re kidding! That’s my hometown.
BH: No it’s not.
PK: It really is.
BH: No way.
PK: That is weird.
BH: That’s really, really weird. I was raised in Victoria, but I was born in Port Lavaca
PK: Yes!
BH: Which is like thirty minutes outside so yes that’s just kind oflike the area.
PK: That is insane.
BH: You know where I’m from.
PK: Very well, yes. Do you think that location specifically has a big effect on your work the dynamics of your family? You said you were uncovering some things in your family archive.
BH: Yeah, I think that the area definitely is- I guess for me as an artist, I’ve always kind of felt like I was on the outside in that town. I always felt like I never really found my place and if I did I was forced to in some way and with that being such a small like slash conservative town, I always felt like so a lot of my work is more in response to the place that I was rejecting. I don’t ever want to offend anyone by talking bad about somewhere they may treasure.
PK: But you have to be true to like what you feel about that area because I am very much the same way.
PK: Do you have a good relationship with your family and regardless of if it’s good or not so good, do you think that impacts your artwork in any way?
BH: Yes, I have an excellent relationship with my family. I will say that I’m not as close to my dad as I wish I was, but we still have a good relationship, a healthy relationship.
PK: Good.
BH: Go back and ask your question one more time?
PK: Regardless of your relationship um with your family, do you think this impacts your artwork in a positive way?
BH: Yeah, it definitely does because I definitely- coming from being- I know I’m not old, but older to realize that my parents are individuals just like myself and it’s like helped me understand some things and decisions that they made that weren’t good for us kids, but also helped me understand that they were just doing the best that can at that time. So I think for the most part the relationships that we have are really good, but now that I’m older and coming at it from a different perspective and not under any kind of financial independence in my parents now I feel like I can be a little more honest with my interpretation of how my family was raised .
PK: Was that, as you were going through photos, was it kind of- was it a hard process for you to face it and realize that everything you’d kind of been telling yourself wasn’t exactly accurate?
BH: Right. I think at the time whenever I was growing up, my family was very big on if it was an occasion we’d bring out the archive and we’d all look at it as a group, as a family. We’d all laugh and remember the memories and things like that during that time, but that was before I learned how to look at like through the eyes of a photographer and not really realize what I was looking at or understanding the importance of an object, holding it in your hand and seeing what’s there and now, like I said, when I was going through them as a child, it was something I couldn’t even fathom, like who my parents were before me, who my grandparents were before me. I remember trying to imagine it being some perfect place, but now I know what was behind those pictures and what was left out of those pictures, what was decided to be in the frame, all that plays into the photograph or the process of taking a photo, right? So yeah, definitely the experience changed for me whenever as I got older and then studying photography, going through the pictures again I did realize I had been lying to myself for a really long time and not really being honest with myself and now that I have a daughter of my own, now knowing that I am actively protecting her from some of these hard truths because I am conscious of how she sees her family at a young age because I don’t want her to develop resentment already.
PK: You don’t want it to be tainted.
BH: Right, because then again, that’s my perspective, right? Maybe she may not have the same one when she grows up and she has her life experiences, maybe then she’ll have a completely different perspective.
PK: Right, just like how your parents had their perspectives because we are all individuals and we are all going to formulate things in a different way. How did you acquire your family’s photographic archive?
BH: I just started to ask around, ask my aunts, my uncles and my mom. All of my grandparents have passed so I kind of know who has what because of that really awful experience of losing them all, but now that I started to call around, see what people were willing to not let go of, I am truly taking care of them and scanning them to have digital copies of them as well, not just hard copies so I am trying to do it as a communal thing where I am trying to help them organize it, but I have the tools and knowledge of how to. And also, now that I’m able to look at it, like the way my family was photographed was through my grandparents’ eyes, or through my mother’s eyes. Kind of realizing, not that I wanted to take from them, but trying to keep in mind the way that they photographed too because I want to maybe emulate some of those things so I can document my family like they would have or my grandparents would have.
PK: Oh yeah, that’s a really interesting insight on how they would have done that.
BH: I’m trying to be conscious of those things.
PK: Are you comfortable with the medium that you use or you say you challenge yourself to take pictures how your family would have taken pictures. Does that take you out of your comfort zone?
BH: No, I gotta say, being so new to making art, it wasn’t until 2016 that I took my first art class ever, so still learning how to talk about making art is still really difficult for me to do. I still feel like I’m really new to it, I don’t ever want to feel like I’ve mastered it because then that would totally take away from some of the creative things that I get to do. But yeah, I’m really comfortable in my medium. I think sometimes I wish I would have taken a semester of printmaking, that’s one thing I wish I would have taken that I didn’t and I am out of time. But I know there is definitely some really cool repetition and things that you could do with printmaking, but again, I am pretty happy with photo.
PK: Do you put your work out to the public, whether it be through social media or?
BH: My only experience in putting my work out is through critiques. I’ve put stuff on a website before, but I stripped away some of the code to try and rebuild it. But no, I never put my work on social media, not that I’m against it. Being so new to making and trying to call myself an artist is still scary to me so I still don’t put any work online. It really is just here and there.
PK: Do you find yourself, when taking photos, do you find yourself trying to curate what you’re trying to capture and if you do, do you feel that is truthful to what you are trying to portray?
BH: Good question. I am not only a photography major, but I am also a Mass Comm PR major so I am a dual major right now. I think it is interesting that you ask that because I think I am always trying to find that balance where I have one major that’s telling me to literate and free and honest and talk about all these things and I have one that says, you know, everything is cookie-cutter and everything is structured in some way where its for the mass media. To answer you question of if I take pictures to fit an aesthetic, no, I never do that. I can;t get myself into the practice of that because I feel as if I am truly trying to strategically tell a story and I want to be a little bit more honest. PK: I found your photographs with the cracked linoleum flooring and the ones with the pink curtain, it just got me. What was your thought process in photographing both of these?
BH: For my thesis, I wanted to pull pieces and talk about identity and time and also representation. What I did originally was go to Port Lavaca, which was where I spent most of my childhood and go back to my grandparents house that we still had, my family still owns one of my grandparent’s house. I thought originally that was going to be my location and I was going to stage a bunch of stuff there and I was thinking about trying to tie in the part where my family’s having a really hard time letting go of the house. Everyone is trying to make it a priority to sell it so they can move on, but still no one is ready to move on. My grandfather passed almost three years ago and the house is still there. When I went into the house, one of the things I wanted to be able to do was capture the things before the remodel. I missed the kitchen which was really sad for me because that’s where a lot of the time I spent in that house revolved around. So I went to the places in the house I remembered. That flooring was still there. Because it was aged, it had so many stories that were told on this floor, so many things happened on this floor, I wanted to be able to capture that. So I found a spot on the floor that was kind of the most damaged. I felt like that image showed the history and the time that’s passed and giving all those rich textures and talk about all those experiences of life.
PK: How do you think your work comments on bigger issues, whether it be in our country or in our world, or even in a town or where you live?
BH: For me, I think growing up in the 80s specifically during Reagan’s administration, I remember always feeling like I never saw my family on TV, I never could identify with anybody that was on TV, the story lines, the characters, everything all looked the same and and none of it was familiar to me so I always want to be conscious of taking photographs and representing especially Hispanic culture in a way that we’re not always made. So, pregnant, like drug lords or cartel or the Chicanas. I want to be able to tell stories, but no longer feed into the stereotypes that we see all the time. If anything, if my work has any kind of touchstones to anything socio-political, I always want to be conscious of lifting up people’s stories, minorities, making sure that there’s more representation, more diverse representation. If I can help add to that conversation, that would be great. Especially thinking of my daughter and her growing up and thinking about the things that she sees, I want her to always feel like there’s a place for her.