“Visual Verses: The Poetic Journey of Dona Ann McAdams”

It is often said that a photograph conveys a myriad of narratives, yet for Dona Ann McAdams, images alone do not suffice. In Black Box, the latest memoir by the renowned American photographer, she intricately intertwines visuals captured throughout her forty-year career with personal, poetic musings that she refers to as “ditties.”

Since 1975, McAdams has utilized her Leica M2 to navigate and interpret her surroundings, with her work showcased in prominent cultural establishments such as MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Presently, she resides on a goat farm in Vermont, where she persistently chronicles the essence of rural life and her bond with the natural world.

Within Black Box, she opts to combine her images with rich prose that frequently encapsulates a moment or an associated sentiment, inviting the audience to connect not only visually but also emotionally. In the afterword of the book, she articulates her ditties as “songs intended as melodies for the photographs. At times they share a relationship, yet often they do not. The ditties are as authentic as memory permits, but memory diminishes.”

Prior to acquiring her first camera, McAdams would envision photographs in her mind, meticulously determining the light, composition, and perspective. “By the time I finally purchased a camera, I had a clear idea of how to utilize it,” she reflects. “I had already mastered shooting without truly possessing the device.”

Her extensive collection of works encompasses significant events in recent history, such as the Queer Liberation Movement, the cultural conflicts of the 90s, and the performance art movement during the 1980s and 1990s. She has documented artist friends like Angela Davis and Meredith Monk, cultural luminaries including Harvey Milk, David Bowie, and John Malkovich, as well as the twin towers on the morning of September 11 (published for the first time in Black Box).

Throughout the years, she has devoted herself to introducing photography to marginalized communities across the United States – from dairy farms in New England to mountainous regions in Southern Appalachia – empowering individuals to capture their own images and preserve their legacies.

The bond McAdams shares with animals, especially horses, appears almost transcendent. Having been born in the Year of the Horse, she has captured images of these creatures since she first acquired a camera. In 2004, she began taking horse riding lessons in Chestnut Ridge, New York, subsequently becoming a licensed hot walker at Saratoga Racecourse, where she aimed to deepen her understanding of the surrounding community. “Individuals arrived from all different backgrounds. They communicated in numerous languages, but one common language, horses.”

Light and time also emerge as persistent motifs in the memoir, along with the photographer’s lasting intrigue with boxes: the black diet pill containers of her mother; the boxes her father would assemble at work; the glass enclosure of a gas station; a phone booth; a black box television screen; the black box of the theater; a darkroom and a camera obscura. Similar to the camera’s function, the photographic memoir itself transforms into a black box – a relic filled with nostalgia, memories, and time.

Black Box: A Photographic Memoir is released by Saint Lucy Books; donaannmcadams.com