Everything here is fine only I fell out of a tree the first hour I was here | Jennifer Drabbe

Description

“Everything here is fine only I fell out of a tree the first hour I was here and I also cut my thumb” tells a loving and layered story about intimacy and connection and it shows how generations change but that our behavior and our needs don’t. “Knowing if I tell you everything everything will be all right,” my eighteen-year-old grandmother writes in a letter to her mother in 1944. The war is in full swing and I read that she has an independent character, that she is poetic, dramatic, messy even but also madly in love. She is also pregnant and unmarried. A complete correspondence follows between my grandmother, her mother and her grandmother. With the letters in my possession I fell headfirst into my young grandmother’s world, a world which is surprisingly recognizable. They way the women communicate with each other feels familiar. What follows is an exploration into six generations of women in my family. I literally zoom in on letters and images of all the generations, I photograph, I unravel and cut things up until I find what I was looking for: connection and belonging.

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As a photographer, and previously as a theatre director, I have a love for the daily things which make us so human: namely the playful and tender aspects of our behaviour. Trust, connection and belonging are the most important themes in my work and my subjects are often people closest to me. I explore our individuality and that what binds us. Everything here is fine only I fell out of a tree the first hour I was here is my second book.