Arts debate

The power of art in a time of mourning - the Virginia Tech tragedy

12 May 2007 by Richard Allnutt 1 comments

Can art help us through a tragedy? Photographer Richard Mallory Allnutt talks about how taking photographs helped him and others to comprehend the events and emotions of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

Photography and text by Richard Mallory Allnutt, text edited by Robin Mallory Allnutt

“Where were you when ‘it’ happened?” we ask each other, and understand. Everyone in the town of Blacksburg knows what “it” is. “It” is all the things we know but can’t explain. Words are inadequate to describe what really happened, and so we ask our friends “where” instead of “what” and “why”. Where is something we can answer. There are no other answers right now.

On that Monday, my brother, Robin, and I were together at his farmhouse just ten minutes from the Virginia Tech campus where he teaches creative writing in the Department of English. Had Monday been Tuesday, Robin would have been there, not thirty feet from the shootings at Norris Hall, teaching a first year writing course. I would have been on my way out of town to another job.

Blacksburg, Virginia, was my home for eight years while I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech. I spend much of my time between photographic assignments with my brother writing various articles and editing photographs.  Robin and I are English by birth, but this quiet rural university town nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains has become a second home, an oasis of sorts. My life and work as a photographer keep me traveling a good deal of the year, but I have returned often since completing my degrees here more than a decade ago. In fact, more than half of my life has been spent in, and orbiting around the Blacksburg community I first visited as a child in 1979.

The days following the massacre were filled with communal events, the convocation, the candlelight vigil, the moments of silence. They were an attempt to help the town and college come to terms with the losses, and our shattered peace of mind. Grief merged with an unreasonable sense of guilt for many I know, Robin included. There was anger too, of course, but the senselessness of it all seemed to temper that somehow. My grief refused to express itself openly though, and remained bunched up in my stomach in ever tightening knots. I wanted to talk about how I felt, but words wouldn’t come, not even for my brother. I think in images and they were all around me. Photography was the only way I knew to answer “it”

I couldn’t face the images of that first awful day. I left my camera at home. Soon after, taking photographs became an absolute necessity. It was a physical need; like an athlete’s hunger to train each day. The wall of tension inside me was waiting to exercise itself, although exorcise is probably a better word. I wanted to believe that I’d begin to feel a little better if I could make something beautiful from all of our sadness. As with all of the other questions though, I have no answer.

I tried to be as considerate as I could when taking pictures. I had no wish to add to anyone else’s anguish. I used long lenses and kept to a respectable distance. I only photographed the public spaces of our town and university to capture our emotions.

Taking photographs was a way for me to focus on something constructive when our whole world had seemingly fragmented. My imagination slipped in and out of struggles with the gunman. This was a ridiculous, time-warped unreality of course, considering that I was not even on campus when it happened. I could never undo what had been done. I was not alone with these demons strangely. A number of friends, and even my own brother, confessed to the same thing. Having something positive, the photographs, kept me from being overwhelmed by the rawness, the ferocity, of these phantom battles. It wasn’t until I started editing my photographs, though, that I realized how important the images would be to me and others.

Simply put, the photographs helped me feel human again. Seeing the sea of school colors at the convocation the day after was the first indication. Robin said he had never liked the school colors before, but the waves of orange and maroon shirts and hats began to warm us both immediately. When I drew closer to the crowds, I began to see the faces for the first time. Their expressions mirrored what I was feeling. Each time I run through the images of that day, I can see the realness of our loss. And each time, I can let another small piece of it go.

While I did not originally take the photographs with the thought of publication, I decided to put the images on a small website to share with my friends and family. I hadn’t realized what an impact this would have. I received many expressions of thanks for my work from both people who were here at the time, and from those not even connected, and merely concerned for our safety. One close family friend even called my parents from a satellite phone in the middle of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. I worried that some might find my work insensitive, intrusive, but surprisingly everyone has given me warm comments, and told me how glad they are that I shared them. Some of the English Department faculty have even asked to use a few images in a slide show at their commencement services on May 12th. Former classmates of mine wrote of the dignity of students and their collective grace in the images. My friends told me how it had helped them to connect with their former home, and what everyone is still experiencing here. They found it important to see a less sensationalized view of Blacksburg that eluded much of the media whirlwind that followed April 16th.

So many questions have flown about us in these last three weeks. The answers, if they ever come, will follow much later. The only answer that any of us can give right now is in my photographs. Where were we? We were all there together.

Below you can see some of Richard's photographs. To see more please go to Richard's website.