Last June, Jennifer Haigh and I took a walk through one of Massachusetts' most beautiful parks together, World's End, in Hingham. We followed a wooded path through drumlins, low, rolling hills formed by glaciers, until we reached where the Atlantic Ocean reflected the sky. Jennifer walks these paths in order to think and compose, and I thought that it would be an appropriate place to photograph where she puts thoughts together to create her character-driven novels and short stories.
Originally, these images were going to be part of my Boston writers and artists series, but I was very pleased when Jennifer contacted me this past fall to ask if she could use one of the images from the shoot for her upcoming book of short stories set in and around the fictionalized coal-mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania, Her new book, News from Heaven: The Bakerton Stories, will be published by HarperCollins Publishers on January 29, 2013.
Jennifer is as she is photographed; direct, thoughtful, intelligent. She has a wry and down-to-earth sense of humor that came through our chat, and often surprised me through the course of our conversation. I remember asking her what she wanted to grow up to be when she was a kid, expecting that her answer might have to do with writing or the arts, and she paused thoughtfully, and replied, "I remember, at age five, wanting to be a gas station attendant." She had no memory of why, and we both chuckled. Obviously, things developed in a scholarly direction for her as she got older, as she ended getting her MFA at the University of Iowa in writing, and as an adult, she said she couldn't imagine doing anything but write.
I loved working with Jennifer because she was confident both of herself and how she enjoyed best being photographed, and also because of her trust in me. The walk was wonderful, and I was delighted to work with Jennifer, photographing her on a beautiful day at the World's End. If you'd like to learn more about Jennifer's work, please visit her beautiful website at http://www.jenniferhaigh.com.
