Photographer Alyss Vernon recently focused on familiar corners of her childhood home.
Writer: Macey Shofroth
The first time Alyss Vernon experienced an Iowa blizzard, she pulled on every item of clothing she owned and went outside to make snow angels.
The New Mexico-born photographer discovered she loved the cold while pursuing a master’s degree in photography at the University of Iowa. Her photos helped her build a relationship with this new landscape that felt so drastically different from where she grew up.
Iowa “was such a foreign landscape to me that I made photos of my surroundings and tried to figure out my place in that, physically and metaphorically,” she said.
Vernon has long used photography as a way to process her life. Her style is soft, ethereal. She explores themes of memory and loss, and she typically feels most comfortable creating landscapes and still lifes.
She gets nervous photographing people, except her parents, who inspired her recent exhibit, “Not Home: Photographs by Alyss Vernon,” at Wartburg College’s Waldemar A. Schmidt Art Gallery and Midl Gallery in Newton. The show, which was supported by an Iowa Arts Council grant, explored how time has altered her relationships with her family and her concept of home.
Wartburg College exhibited Alyss Vernon’s “Not Home” show.
“I grew up in the same house since I was a baby, then in my second year of college, my parents moved to a different house. So I’d visit them in this different house that was full of all the objects that I grew up with, just in a weird space,” Vernon said.
“Not Home” features photos of Vernon’s parents among many of the things that made up her childhood home. There are her dad’s jeans hanging on the living room mantle, trophies she and her siblings won in youth sports, generations of family photos hanging on the fridge.
“Reflect Away,” part of Alyss Vernon’s “Not Home” series.
These photos capture the essence of her parents. To Vernon, these details of life, the household tchotchkes, tell the story of who we’ve been and who we’ve become.
One photo shows the “pile of crap” her dad pulls out of his pockets every day and places on a table. “When he can’t find something, it’s likely in that pile,” Vernon said. “I really wanted to highlight those little moments and collections. It’s hard to slow down and appreciate the little eccentricities that make each person special to you.”
“It’s in Your Pile” featured the contents of her dad’s pockets.
Vernon works as the gallery director at Olson-Larsen Galleries in Valley Junction. Promoting the work of other artists is a natural extension of her own creative identity, an inheritance from her mother.
“Pretty much anything my mom touches turns to art, whether she was making our clothes when we were kids or sewing curtains or painting a mural on her friend’s walls. She’d make the trophies for my dad’s competitive target shooting games,” Vernon said. “Art was always a thing, and I started pursuing it in high school with photography.”
Ever since, Vernon has used photography as a form of communication. “It’s a big way to process what’s going on in my life,” she said. “For things that I can’t communicate verbally right away, it’s easier for me to get in that zone and tune everything else out and make pictures.”
She hopes her photos help viewers process their own experiences in the same way. Her recent solo exhibition included a Google form that encouraged viewers to share what “home” means to them. Their answers filled a screen in the gallery and added a layer of connectivity between Vernon and her viewers, whom she believes understand the ever-shifting nature of home and family.
“These photos are specific to me, and looking at them, it’s obvious they aren’t from Iowa,” she said. “But they give you a sense of home no matter where your home is. You can see the refrigerator pictures at any grandma’s house. These photos were taken over the course of four years, and we can look at how things change over time.”
