Shot in 1984 in Monterey, MA, this footage shows a log cabin, the nature surrounding it, and two women gardening on a sunny day. JoAnn Elam’s interests in farm labor, gender roles, and nature intersect in Monterey ’84, where she also experiments with abrupt cutting techniques and reverse motion. Monterey seems to have been a
This footage by JoAnn Elam was taken from a moving car on the highway near Chicago, where Elam lived for most of her life. Cars, lampposts, buildings, and the Chicago skyline in the distance come in and out of the frame, without the camera being able to control what it is filming. As in another
In this footage, JoAnn Elam focuses on a group of African American men picking up a tire, working the land, and taking care of animals on a farm. At the end, a woman who addresses Elam behind the camera is folding the laundry left to dry outside. As in many other elements in this collection,
In this black-and-white footage, JoAnn Elam films a butterfly in extreme close-up and close-up, a group of friends outside a house in the countryside, and one of them interacting with a child and a woman inside. This footage might have been taken in Alabama while Elam and her second husband Joe Hendrix were visiting Hendrix’s
This footage shows a few people gathered inside and opening presents, perhaps for Christmas. The date and location are unknown and the darkness of the images makes it difficult to identify any of the people on screen, although it might have been taken by JoAnn Elam or her second husband Joe Hendrix in Chicago with
Like many other elements in the JoAnn Elam collection, BC revels in and reveals the beauty of the nature surrounding us. From a fixed standpoint, Elam films the mountains, trees, and clouds all around her, thereby creating a vertiginous effect through the spanning movement of the camera. The date and location of this footage are
This footage was most likely shot in a residential neighborhood of Chicago, where JoAnn Elam lived most of her life. The camera pans over the houses and the trees on the streets, revelling in their striking fall colors. As many elements from this collection demonstrate, Elam filmed her house, the places she visited, and the
In this footage, JoAnn Elam films a covered bridge and the nature surrounding it in the woods. The camera sometimes lingers on the bridge in a long shot or in a medium shot truncating parts of it, or it moves rapidly through the trees nearby. Until a child appears very briefly near the very end,
Using stop motion, JoAnn Elam animates a series of pictures drawn by hand and depicting pink, purple, and blue flowers, trees, and suns. Although the landscapes resemble a child’s drawings and may be described as naive, they are also somewhat menacing, when the flowers and the suns grow bigger on the screen until they invade
This short footage by JoAnn Elam shows two women digging a hole in the woods. As many elements in this collection reveal, Elam was interested in farm labor, especially as she spent some time in Monterey, MA in the early 1980s. Throughout her life, Elam was also an advocate for gender equality and her work