Metamorphoses (—book, prints, multimedia presentation)
metamorphoses
Photographs by Kate Joyce (1998-1999 C.E.)
Translated from the Latin by Andrew Berns (2020 C.E.)
With excerpts from The Latin Library’s Metamorphoses by Ovid (c 8 C.E.)
Softcover
7.44 x 9.69 in.
18.9 x 24.61 cm.
250 b&w photographs
672 pages
(read some press)
Originally I made the photographs in Chile while traveling alone as a teenager. Twenty-years later I discovered the photographs in the work of Ovid.
The book is in English and Latin.
I distilled the myths to an essence. I discovered lines of poetry and photographs that resonated (out of the 1,500 black and white negatives from my travels and the 11,995 lines, 15 books and over 250 myths from Ovid).
I then asked my friend Andrew Berns to make an English translation of those lines.
Alongside Berns' English translation are excerpts of Ovid's poem in Latin that act as a design element and reminder of time and origin.
Diana from Actaeon and Diana
This is a video of our multimedia presentation of Metamorphoses (Special Problems Press, 2021), photographs from Chile by Kate Joyce, with translation by Andrew Berns and live soundscapes by Justin Ray, aka RMX#13. Live recording from event at SITE Santa Fe, March 11, 2022
from Pythagoras
“A remarkable and unforgettable work. Haunting lines from Ovid in antiphony with profoundly evocative images from Chile taken by a teenage avatar of the mature photographer, creating a hypnotic and weirdly un-put-downable series of narratives.”
Kate Joyce’s Metamorphoses transforms Ovid’s collection of myths from the ancient world, written toward the end of his life nearly two thousand years ago, into a photographic journal of contemporary life.
Earthiness, domestic activity, and unlikely female heroines emerge. Themes and stories that historically and predominantly have been described through male narrators and on a European stage are seen in the people, architecture, landscape and animals of a Latin American country—from Santiago to Tierra del Fuego. Gender is fluid. As are place, time and the identity of non-human creatures.
Looking back, these places, people and events, while taken from my own experience, have come to embody near universal figures from myth—and now I see in them the patterns that are universally described as the fate of Apollo & Daphne, Narcissus & Echo, and Orpheus & Eurydice.
“This book leaves one with a richer sense of labor, leisure, love, death, family, fraternity, sorrow, joy, nostalgia, and all the changes that make every human moment novel, fleeting, and meaningful.”
from Caenis/Caunus
Mineral, flesh, trees
Cemeteries are cemeteries, and cemeteries are labyrinths. A woman squeezing jam through cheese cloth is also a god molding Chaos into the planets. Construction crews can become Spartoi. A coiled garden hose, Ariadne’s thread.
Revenge, love, sacrifice
I left my photographs to die or incubate. Their dormancy ended when I placed my own experience into a larger design.
Rivers, yeast, light
It will help if you have familiarity with Ovid and his book of transformations, but it is not necessary. Here the minimal translation is side by side with excerpts from his 1st century poem.
Grief, humor, heroism
Metamorphosis is a relationship across time.
It is a box of negatives that became a book.
from The Plague
from Cadmus
About the artist KATE JOYCE
Kate Joyce is a photographer working in typologies, the relationship between pictures and literature, and collaboration. She is interested in processes of transformation, metaphysics, and analogy-making. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other books include Big Ears Knoxville (Hat and Beard Press, 2019).
About the translator ANDREW BERNS
Andrew Berns is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. He teaches and writes about the intersection of the textual and natural worlds, particularly in the context of Jewish-Christian relations in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean. After learning that Berns was a long-time lover of Latin poetry, Kate Joyce proposed this unique collaboration in translation.
photo by Maeve Belsby