Artist Statement, Edith Gould, March, 2022

There is a “spirit that exists between us and the land, a ribbon between things, like an electrical current generated”.
(Rick Bass, 2008)

I am a psychoanalyst. I am a photographer.
I am a photographer. I am a psychoanalyst

For me, these two realms converge and inform one another in a continuous, mutually influencing dynamic relationship.

I am drawn to photographing the landscape and sites of ruin, ancient, sacred, commonplace, remnants of human lives lived in the present and long ago. The camera acts as a probe, re-finding, remembering and enlivening what has existed in the past, and continues to call out to us. Every photograph is a link to our collective history, a link restored, a found memory.

In the psychoanalytic relationship, our gaze is directed inward to the landscape of the self, revealing that which continues to haunt, the unconscious essence of our primal experiences and our earliest physical surround.

The landscape acts upon us, shapes us like the river alters the contours of the land.

The heroic people of Ukraine are fighting for liberty and the right to govern themselves. They fight to protect and defend their beloved land, their home.

My photograph, “Light Island, Glacier Bay, Alaska” expresses the duality of human experience, of conscious awareness and the simultaneous presence of the submerged, reflecting unconscious mind. The image is meant to be meditative and healing.

My photograph of “the Casablanca market in Morocco”, memorializes the vital, everyday experience of seeking food and sustenance. The bounty of the sea is central in the image of the glittering fish in a cart.

My Photograph ”Above the Mercado, Havana, Cuba” is an image of hope, which in these tragic times, we struggle to maintain. Centered In this picture, taken in a vast, interior space of astounding wreckage, windows shattered, walls and floors broken and collapsing, is this beautiful, undaunted papaya plant that has pushed its way through the concrete floor, towards life and survival.