IG: @katia.dermott
katiadermott.com

Fallen Branches Weigh More than the Trees

I grew up in rural Maine. Homeschooled on a farm, barefoot and dust laden. Surrounded by the land and a rotating crew of seasonal workers, I learned to thrive on my imagination. The worlds I built were both near and far from the reality of my own life. I have always been an observer––bringing what I see to what I imagine.

Photography is both a tool of sight and a means of fiction. It exists so near reality that it sometimes feels more honest than the subject from which it is derived. Photography allows me to curate and condense information, expressing complexities that are often beyond the scope of a single moment.

Fallen Branches Weigh More than the Trees is a series about womanhood, transformation, and discovery of self identity within the private sphere. It tells the story of two women––connected by blood, separated by years––as they negotiate their identities in the isolation of rural Maine. In a post-divorce all women household, my mother seeks reinvention while my sister navigates puberty and the defining of self. Behind the curtain of contemporary pressures for public performance and social media, these two women walk parallel paths en route to understanding who they are.

Bio

Based in Maine, Katia Dermott uses photography, book making, and prose to create windows into worlds adjacent to where a viewer resides. Katia grew up on an organic vegetable farm; as each summer began, she found herself surrounded by a new crew of seasonal hands who sometimes lived as close as the room next door. Katia learned from and grew with the land as much as the people who farmed it.

Katia received her BFA for photography from Maine College of Art & Design in 2022. When not making art, you can find Katia saying hi to the neighborhood squirrels.