Image + Word Interview 1: Walter Benjamin Reimagined

Our first installment is an interview between PromptPress intern Ethan Evans and the artist, writer, and PromptPress contributor Frances Cannon. 

Ethan talked with Frances about her latest book of graphic literary criticism Walter Benjamin: Reimagined (MIT Press). 

Frances has an MFA in creative writing and book arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a BFA in poetry and printmaking from the University of Vermont. Cannon’s graphic memoir, The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank, was published by Gold Wake Press. Cannon has also published a book of paintings and poetic translations Tropicalia (Vagabond Press) as well as a book of poems and prints Uranian Fruit (Honeybee Press). 

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Walter Benjamin Reimagined is unlike anything I have ever read. How did this book come into being?

Well, there are many ways to answer that question. I’ll start on broad terms—I’m a maker of hybrid work, in that I’m always intertwining and blending my writing and art, even when these forms are not well recognized or supported by traditional, societal pathways. I am a stubborn amphibian of creative expression, trying to inhabit the worlds of visual art and writing simultaneously. Throughout my education and art training, I have sought ways to combine my passions in writing and art-making, in text and image. At the University of Vermont, where I studied English and creative writing, my thesis project The Intersection between Text and Image, revolved around the union of visual and literary arts. For this project, I self-published a small edition of a book of silk-screened prints and poems called Image Burn. My charge was to make poems and prints that complement each other and function together to express my vision of beauty. By merging two artistic realms– poetry and printmaking–I hoped to produce a third aesthetic experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. This type of experimentation and interdisciplinary artmaking is hard to fit into defined academic subjects, “market categories” within the publishing industry, and genre labels. When I first started responding to Walter Benjamin’s work in a visual format, I knew that I wanted to make a book that would incorporate scholarly analysis, research, translation, as well as more playful and experimental elements. So I started there: with a notebook of sketches, and an idea. 

Various visual guides to famous philosophers/theorists exist (I own comic guides to Kant and Nietzsche, for example), but most of them don’t attempt to mimic their thinkers narrative method in the manner you do; part of what appeals to me about Benjamin Reimagined is that it locates new illustrations and symbols in the work of a writer who worked closely with and made metaphors of works of visual art. Do you think the sort of work you do with word and image would work for a thinker who relied less on visual images? 

You’re spot on. The main reason why I am drawn to Benjamin is his fragmented collection of imagery, symbols, dreams, stories, theories, philosophies, and his writings about art. This type of material begs for a response or conversation in the visual realm. He wrote quite a lot about children’s books, color theory, and the painter Paul Klee–all subjects which gave me great pleasure to explore in my drawings. 

When reading your work in the context of Benjamin I cannot help but wonder: was it challenging for you to find a publisher for this work, and for your hybrid work in general? I know that Benjamin struggled to find publishers due to the genre-bending nature of his scholarship. 

This certainly was a challenge! I often asked myself, in the early stages of this project, who would publish such a book? Somehow, with beginner’s luck, I decided to submit my half-formed idea, along with a sample of my drawings and an early draft of a graphic essay about Benjamin’s chapter, “The Collector,” to a few academic presses, including MIT Press. I admire MIT’s approach to a wide variety of disciplines, including philosophy, science, art history, technology, theory, and so on. Since the book I wanted to create would stretch across multiple realms of thought, I proposed this book to their editors as a new approach to translation. This methodology could be given many names: ekphrasis, graphic translation, visual literary criticism, hybrid scholarship, take your pick. When this press responded with interest, I dove into the research mode, reading as much Benjamin as I could get my hands on, and taking notes in both written and doodled form. After a few years, the shape of a book came together, and I worked closely with a handful of very talented and patient editors and designers to bring the manuscript into physical form. 

PromptPress is also looking forward to publishing some of your reading notes and book reviews as the first installment of our new ephemera series. Is it your natural process to make written and visual notes as you read? How does that change the experience of reading? 

Yes! I always have a notebook and several pens on hand so that I can doodle as I read, doodle as I listen to music, doodle as I listen to a lecture or live reading–it helps me process information to activate these different parts of the brain simultaneously. In short, I am able to read with more depth and attention if I can also explore the text through my drawings.

I noticed the photos you instagrammed from your studio in Vermont have a number of watercolor images. How much of your work is solely visual or textual? Does most of your artistic output end up mixing the two? 

My preferred mediums these days are pen, ink, and watercolor. The materials are fairly simple, affordable, transportable, and versatile—I can do my work in a cafe, on a train, in a field, etc. I bring a notebook and pens with me at all times, and I bring my watercolor set if I have a project that I’m already working on. I teach a watercolor course, which is why my social media is currently flooded with those paintings, but in the past I worked a lot more with printmaking techniques such as letterpress and woodblock carving, as well as a bit of bookmaking. Unfortunately, my writing practice is not as romantics. I wish I could say that I write all of my manuscripts by hand on legal pads or a papyrus scroll, but most of my writing takes place on the computer. I hand-letter text for my hybrid pieces, a practice which is much more enjoyable than typing into a little machine. I haven’t yet dipped my toes into the immense world of digital art. I prefer analog, but I wouldn’t mind learning to be proficient in both the digital and paper realms. 

Do you have any exciting future projects you’d like to talk about? New forms you’d like to explore, maybe? 

I’m currently writing a “novel”—I’m putting this word in quotes because I’m still trying to make a decision about what the book will end up becoming—it’s based on my true experience, but it’s currently in a state of auto-fiction limbo, and might end up stepping further into the fictional realm. I have made a few paintings in response to my own writing process, more to help me work through some ideas than to “illustrate” the text, and it’s such an early draft that I can’t yet predict how much visual artmaking will be involved. I also always have several projects in the works, and aside from this novel, I’m slowly working on writing and illustrating a handful of children’s books. I’m always involved in collaborative projects, and I have projects underway with various artists and authors, including poetry collections, more kid’s books, puppet shows, and oddball performances. 

Frances’ website is here. You can find her on Instagram here.