Episode 14: Josephine Sacabo Tells a Story of Her Journey Toward Transcendence and Connection

Josephine Sacabo didn’t set out to be a photographer. As a child, she wrote poetry and fantasized about becoming a great poet. Later, she acted in theater.

A native of Laredo, Texas, she entered UT, but did not feel comfortable in that ambience. She wanted to go somewhere “away,” which she did when she was accepted to Bard College. There, she met her future husband, Dalt Wonk, a playwright and poet, and felt among “her people.” They moved to Europe where they started Bird in the Hand Theatre Company, and they lived between Paris and London. A friend suggested they see a house in southern France, and though they had not intended to purchase anything, they fell in love with the place and bought it for an astounding $1200.  

At the house, Josephine found a camera left in one of the drawers. She worked with an English friend, a student of Henri Cartier-Bresson, and learned the Cartier-Bresson style of documentary photography. “I was good at it from the beginning.” It was a style she used when she moved to New Orleans and began a series on the French Quarter. Although she felt she “caught life in a fresh way,” she was concerned, after she got to know the Quarter better, that she was adding to the misery she had come to see in the lives of her photographic subjects.

All images courtesy of the artist.

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Man & Woman in Sunlight

She found a studio behind the Napoleon House restaurant, and she turned to photography with greater self-expression. All her work, she says, is inspired by literature, and as she read Rilke’s Duino Elegies, she photographed a “beautiful couple.” A beauty and sensuality of the couple emerges, not unlike the sensuality of Rilke’s elegies. Here, she deepened her journey toward transcendence and connection, which all of her arts seeks. 

Sacabo eschews any chasing after artistic fashion in favor of diving into what she loves. In this way she connects with those who view her work. The many layers of her work evoke layers of being, some disturbing, yes, but ultimately transcending such disturbance to “come full circle” with compassion and beauty.

Apocalypse

Gravity and Grace. The Years 2020 – 2023.

The Stars

Gravity and Grace. The Years 2020 – 2023.

Lewd

TAGGED

“Walking the graffiti gauntlet from my house to my studio, I am confronted by a lexicon of rampant misogyny, violence and sexual insults. The messages may be verbal but their effects are visceral. We are being ‘tagged’- as hos bitches and worse. But I am not that woman.

Why have women become the targets of the rage and frustration expressed? Why are women bearing the consequences for injustices they have not committed? Where are the graffiti messages by women meant for men?

I do not have the answers to these questions, all I have are these images of what it feels like to be a woman walking these streets. And in this I know I am not alone.” – Josephine Sacabo

The Elusive Eye III

Nocturnes

“Invisible connection is stronger than visible. To arrive at the basic structure of things we must go into their darkness.” – Heraclitus

“Only what we extract from the obscurity within truly belongs to us.” – Proust

“We dream in images. Images are at the most basic level of our true psychic reality. Our dreams are the metaphorical pictures of our individual realities. I believe that through them we can forge a deeper connection between ourselves and the world. By uniting dream and reality we can produce an art that will resonate and in the process learn something about ourselves and others. I photograph things not as I ‘see’ them but rather as I might have ‘dreamt’ them.

The way I’ve put it together in my head is that you have the moon moving across the sky, looking in our windows and seeing our dreams. The ‘Nocturnes’ are what she sees.” – Josephine Sacabo

Susana y La Muerte

Susana San Juan

El Mundo Inalcanzable de Susana San Juan

Homenaje a Juan Rulfo

“El Mundo Inalcanzable de Susana San Juan is a series of photographs based on the Mexican novel Pedro Páramo, a tragic myth of Mexico, by Juan Rulfo. The setting is a town in ruins; the characters, souls wandering in it, doing penance, telling their stories.

Among them is Susana San Juan, whose entire discourse is one of memory and delusions, delivered from her tomb. It is the story of a woman forced to take refuge in madness as a means of protecting her inner world from the ravages of the forces around her: a cruel and tyrannical patriarchy, a church that offers no redemption, the senseless violence of revolution, death itself.

These photographs are my attempt to depict this world as seen through the eyes of its tragic heroine. It is my homage in images to Mexico, to Juan Rulfo and to Susana San Juans everywhere who will not be possessed.

This series was created in collaboration with Jacqueline Miró and is dedicated to my daughter Iris.” – Josephine Sacabo

Une Femme Habitée

“I am the savage angel that fell one morning into your garden of precepts” – Huidobro

“This series was inspired by the poem ”Altazor“ a surrealist epic written by the Chilean poet Vincente Huidobro in the 1920s. It relates the journey of a cosmic being as his parachute falls through the universe – what he saw and what he felt.

I decided to tell the same story with one woman in one room. The images are illuminated moments of her spiritual journey through the darkness much like Altazor’s journey from star to star.” – Josephine Sacabo

Josephine Sacabo’s complete portfolio is available on her website.

Working with her husband and her longstanding model and book-designer, she creates books through Luna Press so that people can return to her work time and again—more than they could by attending a gallery exhibition. In these books, she hopes to connect with people for years to come.  

Josephine appeared in a panel discussion hosted at the National Gallery of Art along with 21st Editions’ founder and publisher Steven Albahari, production manager Pam Clark, and typographer Crissy Welzen. The conversation was moderated by the National Gallery’s special collections librarian and curator of the exhibition, Yuri Long.

The National Gallery of Art celebrated the 25th anniversary of publisher 21st Editions with an exhibition in the library: Photography and the Book Arts from the 21st Editions Collection, on view May 6 – August 29, 2024. Gilded Circles and Sure Trouble: The Art of Josephine Sacabo and Keagan LeJeune is included in the exhibition.

Signed, limited edition photographs are available. For more information please contact A Gallery for Fine Photography.