[Forever] Natalie Young

Natalie Young’s photographs pull you between feelings of hope and heartbreak. And that’s just where she’d like you to be. “I operate on a very emotional level and I want my work to elicit an emotional response,” says Natalie. “Whether they love my work or not, I like to hear what people get out of my images.”

Her first series, “Elements,” is based on images she began taking while living in the southern United States—Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee. Natalie grew up in urban Houston, moving to rural Little Rock at age 12. Although she took many art classes throughout high school, she fell for photography when she got her hands on her college roommate’s old SLR. A job at a local lab taught her about film and she began shooting. After graduation, she moved to Nashville, where she started assisting other photographers and working for local newspapers. At night, she’d print her own work—eventually exhibiting in local art shows.

Old and New
For all of her artwork, Natalie uses the best of both old and new. She shoots with both film and digital cameras, though her favorite is a Rolleiflex from the 1940s. Regardless of how she captures her images, she always creates her fine art prints in a traditional wet darkroom. She went through a period when she didn’t have a darkroom, so she tried digital printing, but found it lacking. Natalie comments, “It just didn’t suit my work. I missed the depth and tonal quality. I tend to print dark and need that tonal range in the shadows.”

However, modern technology plays an important role. First, each image is scanned into her computer. Then Natalie makes tonal corrections using Adobe Photoshop. From there, the image is inverted to create a negative that is printed out on clear transparency film. Although this may sound straightforward, it rarely is. “There is a whole process of calculations and trial and error to get the file to ‘map’ correctly to each specific darkroom paper,” explains Natalie. “There is testing and re-testing, going back and forth between the darkroom and the computer until I get it dialed in.” Once she is happy with the result, she will go into the darkroom and use traditional silver gelatin paper to print out the final images, usually 9 x 9 or 12 x 12. Once the prints have been signed, numbered, and dated on the back, they are mounted using only photo corners and then over-matted with white acid-free rag mats. Natalie does this work herself so that only one person is handling the artwork. If the prints are for an exhibition, she uses simple, dark wooden frames.

Elements
In her series “Elements,” water takes on all forms: rain, mists and clouds. A silo weeps. Headstones drown. Windmills stand forlorn. “The South is rich in these sorts of places,” Natalie says. “Urban development and nature are in constant negotiation, and we are witness to their many small dramas going on around us all the time. There is an aching beauty that hangs in the balance of the moment, and always hints at what just was, or what soon will be.”

The Farm
For “The Farm” series Natalie used a similar process as “Elements,” but went a few steps further to create her one-of-a-kind images. She started with silver gelatin prints no larger than 6 x 8 because she felt that this smaller size would draw the viewer closer. But she wanted to mute the black-and-white images even more, so she hand-stained them using home-brewed tea. It took time and patience but it lead to a soft look that she found perfect for the series. Her artist statement explains why: “The resulting effect creates a thin veil between the viewer and the print, so the interaction with the subject matter is less immediate and is filtered through a sense of history and memory.”

“The Farm” is a beautifully rendered study of heart and home. The project was started when Natalie was 21 and newly married; these photographs chronicle the life of a Kansas wheat farm that has been a part of her husband’s family for generations. Over the course of the past 15 years, Natalie has returned to Kansas again and again, shooting hundreds of images. Six years ago, she began to seriously edit them.

“This project is about place and history, about memory and story. It’s about the things that tie us together, and the things that bring us back,” explains Natalie. In this series, a field lies in furrows. A man stands waiting. Cattle do the same. Time seems to stretch for miles. But then birds take flight, a tractor moves forward; the farm must be worked. For some images, titles like “Talking to Esther” and “Making Bread” are as straightforward as the subjects. But when the animals and the land are the lone images, titles become sad, even ominous: “Stasis,” “Flight,” “Veer.” Together, these photographs are both a celebration of the family farm and an acknowledgement that it is a dying way of life. It is a subject very close to Natalie’s heart. “If someone finds it sentimental, I would be unapologetic about that. This is definitely my little emotional love story with the farm.”

For Natalie, “Elements” and “The Farm” are both still works in progress. On her periodic road trips, the artist keeps her eye out for things that man has built and nature has taken back, images that might fit into the “Elements” series. For the Kansas farm series, Natalie knows that time is dwindling. Although the land will remain in her husband’s family, with the next generation it will cease to be a working farm. Before that day, she will make a number of trips back, hoping to capture those iconic images she has missed. “Early on, I was very intuitive in my shooting and just wandered around and explored and waited to see what the farm offered up. In recent years I have found myself thinking more about the farm when I’m not there and trying to remember what places or things have emotional resonance in my memory. I go back knowing that I want to capture a certain place or thing that was etched in my mind. It is often quiet and subtle moments. ‘Stasis,’ the piano photograph (top image), was one of those. I had it in my mind for six months before I got a chance to go back and photograph it. I think this is where I now am in the process; filling in the small details that I feel are emotionally important.” Eventually, Natalie plans to publish a book based on her husband’s family farm.

Since her move to Southern California in 2000, Natalie Young has exhibited widely and is now represented by Kevin Longino Fine Photographs. Her photographs are in the collection of Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and she was named one of the Top 50 Photographers in the Photolucida Critical Mass 2008 competition. She was also nominated for the 2009 Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and was one of six featured artists in the Texas Photographic Society’s 2008/2009 Print Program.

Natalie recently returned from China where she was invited to exhibit “The Farm” at the Lishui Photography Festival. Simultaneously, her exhibition “Georgia & Sabine,” opened at the Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, OR. She released her first self-published book in conjunction with “George & Sabine,” available on her website, www.natalieyoung.com. Her newest project is called “Longing,” which she’s shooting in obscure locations with a friend who is both the subject and muse.

Patricia Mues is a freelance writer living in Escondido, CA. Her work focuses on the creative and decorative arts and has appeared in HOW, Inspired House and Living in Style.