How We Hold the Sun: Reviewed by Sara J. Winston

Book Review How We Hold the Sun Photographs by Anna Rotty Reviewed by Sara J. Winston “How do we get to really know a place? How does a place hold a fixed impression on our memory? Do we place it by the qualities of its smell, the qualities of its soil, the qualities of its light, the qualities of its water?"

How We Hold the Sun By Anna Rotty.

How We Hold the Sun
Photographs by Anna Rotty
Self-published, 2024. English, 54 pp., 9x10".

How do we get to really know a place? How does a place hold a fixed impression on our memory? Do we place it by the qualities of its smell, the qualities of its soil, the qualities of its light, the qualities of its water?

Part catalog and part monograph, How We Hold the Sun is a softback, perfect-bound book, nearly square, at 9x10 inches, and self-published by Anna Rotty on the occasion of her achievement of an MFA from the University of New Mexico.

I feel the presence of manipulation in the images in both a playful and fastidious sense: as an exploration of the flattening of space and depth that is most integral to photography’s grammar, as well as the sophisticated approach to pacing the images, text, and cut out windows that are a part of the book’s pages.

Rotty’s photographs included in this book were made around the landscape of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The images instigate many questions: How does light travel? How can it bend? And what can it reveal about the natural world, and its wonders, that we don’t already understand?

I keep coming back to the word diffraction. Diffraction is defined by Merriam Webster as a modification which light undergoes especially in passing by the edges of opaque bodies–like water–or through narrow openings and in which the rays appear to be deflected.

“Part of what is owed is not to look away. Although I see mourning underneath the surface of these photos, somewhere there between all the layers of water and time’s relentlessness that she has stacked together within the frame, what strikes you from the surface is the light. The light is achingly beautiful. If Anna points something out to you, I suggest you follow her gaze and try to see what it is that she’s seeing. Knowing that it takes some time for your eyes to adjust to the sunlight, please be patient. Sit and watch all day long with her. Do it again the next day, and a week later. Keep coming back, and looking, and looking.”

– Excerpt from Please look closely, this is important, 

an essay by Robin Babb included in the book

Much like Rotty’s photographs, How We Hold the Sun exhibits modifications, interventions, and layers: isosceles triangle cut-outs that have been slightly burned near the corners, mimic the shape of geometric light diffractions in a photograph on the subsequent pages, echoed later in an aerial photograph of the Rio Grande. The shapes repeat. The colors shift. The difference between the earth’s matter and what might be human flesh isn’t clear. Visual interplay is abundant. Rotty wishes to remind us, or confuse us, over and over again, that these transformational entities — light, water, sediment — are not impervious to manipulation. And that, like the sun, they can be seared into our mind’s eye.

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Sara J. Winston is an artist based in the Hudson Valley region of New York, USA. She works with photographs, text, and the book form to describe and respond to chronic illness and its ongoing impact on the body, mind, family, and memory. Sara is the Photography Program Coordinator at Bard College and on the faculty of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program.