22
B+W
COMMENT
The discovery of a family secret led KK DePaul to create a series
of powerful pictures. She talks to Susan Burnstine about her use
of collage and her decision to go back to college.
AMERICAN CONNECTIONO
ne of the first
things I teach my
students is that the
strongest imagery
often comes from the deepest
scars, desires, hopes, secrets
and dreams, as they connect
us to the core meaning of our
intent. Pennsylvania-based
photographer KK DePaul is
well versed in this methodology
as two of her series, Only Child
and Between the Lines, were
born from a powerful family
secret and the lingering effect
it’s had on her family.
DePaul’s prolonged journey
as an artist began in 1971 when
she earned her undergraduate
degree in art education. She
embarrassingly admits she
earned a D in photography,
primarily because the class
began at 8am and she liked to
sleep late. ‘The approach of my
professor was all about f-stops
and greyscales, which have
never interested me,’ she says.
‘But that D always bothered me.
So, when I was 40, I went back...
same college...same professor.
This time it was different.
I had time to experiment.
I hung on every word. It wassusanburnstine.comone of the best times of my life.
The professor wrote me a note
afterward saying that I was aninspiration to his students. I felt
vindicated and I allowed myself
to continue with photography.’At the age of 55, DePaul
returned to graduate school
to translate her grandmother’s
story into a thesis project.
‘My grandfather was hanged
for murder in 1929,’ she says.
‘Because he had been convicted
on circumstantial evidence, the
family had always understood
that the tragedy was that he had
been convicted wrongly. When
my grandmother died, she left
me a box with all his personal
effects from the year he spent on
death row. There were newspaper
articles, magazines, letters from
my grandmother, letters from
lawyers...and it became quite
clear that he had been guilty and
that my grandmother knew it
all along, but pretended he was
innocent to spare her children
from the stigma. And so my
area of interest became about
women and pretending.’
DePaul’s inspiration was
to explore how this single
act affected how her family
functioned, which subsequently
led her to expose various
connections among five
generations of her family.
While Between the Lines
metaphorically retells how
the murder affected her
grandmother in the aftermath
of her husband’s execution,
Only Child focuses on how
the murder affected her father,
who was just five years old
when his father “disappeared”
from his life. ‘It was during
the Depression, and my
grandmother had to take him
to a home for orphan boys. He
grew up with 25 boys on a farm,
and then at 17 went into the
navy in World War Two,’
she says. ‘He never
lived in a traditional
home with a
mother and father...
and then became
the father of a little
daughter (me). He didn’t
need a daughter...he neededAbove Only Child, from the series Only Child
Below Words that Disappear, from the series Only Child