Photographer Finds The Story In The Picture

The title photographer Joy Bush gives to the image — Loose Screw — suggest something about the sense of humor she wants the viewer to have in looking at the piece. But it also offers some direction for how to look at the image. The first thing that jumps out, after all, is the chair. But the story, whatever it is, starts with the screwdriver balanced on the power outlet. What’s it doing there? And where is the screw it was brought out to tighten? Is it between jobs? Has it been forgotten? Where is the owner of that chair? There’s a sense of incompletion; something hasn’t happened yet, but it’s about to.

Storytelling is the common thread running through ​“Waiting for Something to Happen,” the show of photographs by Joy Bush running now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through Oct. 2. Bush put together the show by culling her favorite images from over 500 photographs she took, mostly in the past year, mostly in New Haven and Hamden. 

“The idea” for the show, she said, ​“came because I had a lot of pictures up on my wall and I didn’t know what I was going to do.” So ​“I decided to write about each picture and why I liked it. And as I was writing, everything I came up with was that I was waiting for something — to either happen, or that I thought had happened.” There was, in time, ​“a story for each picture.” 

But Bush wasn’t looking for a narrative when she took the photographs; they were part of her practice of taking at least one picture a day, which she did without overanalyzing it. ​“I have to shoot with what goes on in my gut, that there’s a reason that I get attracted to things.” Some photographs were humorous on their surface. Others conveyed an easy sense of a subject, such as a dog looking expectantly out of the window of a house. But others were more abstract. ​“They feel kind of empty and lonely, yet there’s still something there that makes me feel quiet,” she said. ​“There’s always a sense of emptiness in some way, and there’s this feeling I want to add to it, or that there’s something that could be added.” Or, she said, ​“like that feeling you have when you’re younger that you want someone to invite you to a party.”

The stories she wrote for herself about why the images were so compelling, in some ways, began within herself. She realized that ​“I hold my breath when I take a picture, and it’s that anticipation that I felt got translated.” But what that anticipation meant changed from image to image. Some stories were very simple; others were ​“more convoluted,” she said. In some stories, the scene involved waiting for people to show up. In others, she said, ​“the story in my head was somebody waiting for a friend and they didn’t show up, and that was the end of it.” 

Sometimes the camera represented an omniscient viewer. Other times she imagined we were looking through the eyes of the person waiting. But ​“somebody else could see it and make up their own story — ​‘I want to sit down, why didn’t they clear the table?’ ” she added. Leaving the images and their narratives open-ended was part of the project, as a way of inviting the viewer in to participate in making the meaning for themselves.

Part of what makes the images feel the way they do is the lack of people in them, a choice Bush made years ago. ​“Most of the time, I don’t put people in my pictures any more,” she said. ​“I used to do a lot of street photography,” and she worked as a photographer at Southern Connecticut State University. ​“After I retired from that job, I just didn’t want people in pictures anymore,” she said with a laugh. But then the challenge because how to shoot pictures ​“that gave a sense that people have been here, and could reflect a personality or a point of view.” So ​“people aren’t totally absent,” and ​“you can make up stories about them if they’re not there.” She intentionally wanted a sense of ambiguity about how long that absence was. Some photos conveyed a question about a place: ​“Did the people abandon it, or are they coming back?” she said.

Bush’s interest in telling stories says something about her chosen medium, and its ways of communicating ideas and emotions compared to other art forms. ​“I don’t know how to talk about that instinct I have, of what attracts me to something,” she said. ​“I think maybe if I could write, I wouldn’t take pictures.” But she doesn’t take pictures with an agenda in mind, nor does she do it to convey a specific message. She’s taking photographs, in part, because she’s exploring, finding out. ​“I think there’s a sense of curiosity when I’m taking a picture: why did I pick this?” Maybe, she said, ​“I like the structure, I like the color.… I like things that are good compositions but may be a little off.” But maybe ​“I’m waiting to know what I’m about as well.”

Part of that has meant being able to trace her own evolution as a photographer. ​“When I first starting doing photography, it was always about making the best picture you could make. And then it got into this thematic thing, about trees, or about frogs, or shadows. And this felt like I got free. I could just make pictures of what I really liked, and what I wanted to make.… there was a sense that was finding more about myself, and it was a really nice experience.”

But that evolution also returned her to the daily practice of photography, which she’s done for years. ​“It’s like practicing a musical instrument — you do it every day, or it doesn’t change. And maybe that’s the important thing to me. I like that my work keeps evolving, it doesn’t stay stuck. I can see myself in all the pictures I take, but something changes in my vision, and I get better at it, and more focused. And I take risks, too.… In whatever art form, it’s a way of talking about what you’re feeling.” But ​“I’m learning about it, too, still. That’s why I’m doing it.”

“Waiting For Something to Happen” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Oct. 2. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.