Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathleen Robbins
Hi Kathleen, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My interest in art began on my family’s farm in the Mississippi Delta, a place that remains central to my work. My maternal grandmother, who spent much of her life there painting, was my first creative influence. While her attempts to teach me to paint didn’t stick, she taught me a way of seeing the landscape in terms of color, light, and story.
In college, I stumbled into a photography class, and it quickly became my medium. Photography offered a way to explore not only the physical landscape but also concepts of grief, family, and memory. I traveled from Mississippi to New Mexico after college to pursue an MFA from the University of New Mexico.
I’ve taught photography in the School of Visual Art and Design at USC as a Professor of Studio Art since 2003. As coordinator of the photography program and affiliate faculty with the Institute for Southern Studies, I continue to examine the relationship between personal history and the shifting cultural and environmental landscape of the South.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My husband died of heart failure in 2018 at 49, and photography became a way to process sudden and profound loss and to explore motherhood and grief and a disruption of time and place. Images from a resulting body of work, Ginkgo, move between outdoor travel with my son, Mississippi where we sought refuge with family, and then follow us back home in 2020.
Of course, the pandemic also brought unique challenges as an educator. When our darkrooms closed during quarantine, we reimagined how to teach photography, creating virtual spaces for collaboration and connection. That experience reshaped my approach to teaching.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As a photographer, my work examines the intersection of memory, grief, and our physical relationship to the natural world. Much of it is rooted in the American South, exploring personal and collective histories through projects like Into the Flatland and Past, Present, Perhaps. My photographs have been included in exhibitions at spaces such as the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans), John Michael Kohler Art Center (WI), Addison Gallery of American Art (MA), Virginia MOCA, Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Columbia Museum of Art. They have also appeared in print publications and online news outlets like The New York Times, Oxford American, and Garden & Gun, NPR, and CNN. My monograph Into the Flatland was published in 2015. I’ve been fortunate to collaborate with writers such as Tom Rankin (who wrote the foreword for my book), Cynthia Shearer, and poets Tim Conroy and Ed Madden.
At the University of South Carolina, I teach courses ranging from introductory film and darkroom photography to graduate seminars that culminate in photobooks and exhibitions. This semester I’m co-teaching a course titled “Photopoetics” with poet and English Professor Ed Madden. The course brings together 8 poets and 8 photographers. I’m proud of fostering a classroom that students describe as inclusive and restorative.
How do you think about happiness?
Time outdoors with my son. After my husband died, being in nature became a way for us to reconnect and find solace. Teaching. Watching my students grow as artists and seeing them push boundaries and take creative risks. Helping a student make their first darkroom print.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.kathleenrobbins.studio
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathleen.robbins.studio/
