It was a Thursday afternoon and I could hear Trish Gibson fiddle with something on the other end of the line, “I’ve put so many resources and energy into keeping this dog healthy,” they said as they prepared a toy puzzle of sorts for their 14 year-old Corgi-Shepherd mix, Delilah. “She’s obsessed with near-constant stimuli whenever she’s awake.”

Gibson is a photographer and writer living in Lexington, and is no stranger to tenacity. Gibson grew up in northeast Tennessee, and has spent much of their life chronicling their Appalachian existence through the lens of a camera. The subject matter of Gibson’s photographic work centers around topics most polite southerners would rather sweep under the rug: gender, violence, and generational trauma. 

“Inflorescence” (2024)

Gibson teaches photography at the University of Kentucky part-time and began studying the artform while enrolled at East Tennessee State University. “I was homeschooled until I got to college and knew that when I got [there] that I wanted to study art.” They were drawn to the organizational nature of taking photos and how it could act as a tool for replication, “I was interested in the structure of photography—it has formulas. It’s a portal and container to show you something in an exact way.” 

Gibson has harbored a love of rules and plans most of their life. They credit some of their astrological placements with this affection, “I think everyone who was born around that same timeframe [as I was] have stelliums in Capricorn. It informs a lot of people my age, and the way I crave structure and control.” Photography satisfied that craving. The hands-on procedure of processing film and creating photographs granted Gibson stability. “I like having a plan and a structure, and getting better at that form and structure. [I like] the rules and the routine and ritual of it. I like the formula that the ritual lays out for you.”

“Emma” (2024)

As a fellow astrology-queer, I had to pry further. I asked about their “big three,” which, for those who don’t know, means their sun, moon, and rising placements. “I’m an Aquarius [sun], Libra [moon], Libra [rising]. When I got my birth chart read it was all earth and air,” they explained. It made sense to Gibson to find those elements dominating their birth chart, “I’m constantly rooting down and reaching out,” they said, “making work that’s of and about specific demographics of people.” 

“Untitled” (2024)

Gibson continued honing their craft in grad school at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they received their M.F.A. in 2018. There, they created a project centering their Aunt Francie and the instances of intimate partner violence and overdose that led to her death. Gibson took portraits of the women in their family while interviewing them about Francie.“None of them would talk to each other, but they would talk to me. I would sit and put out the recorder and take these slow portraits with a large format camera.” 

“Jean” (2020)

This project coincided with the #METOO movement’s media takeover, and this project allowed Gibson to dig into similar themes right in their own community: “I was thinking about generational trauma, epigenetics, and shared consciousness, and how that was coming out in my family.” The exhibition included snippets of the interviews Gibson had recorded, excluding one particular person, “Francie’s voice wasn’t present, which reflected what was going on. So often there’s so much talk around an incident. Everyone has a different story.” At one point during the exhibition the interview snippets all played simultaneously, culminating in an apex of cacophonous noise, simulating the emotional overload of being trapped in an ongoing, traumatic situation. 

“Gravesite” (2021)

Gibson continues to toil in similar themes and topics in their recent work, but there’s been a shift in their style. Their latest photos include minimal captures of interiors and exteriors: a soft, illuminated curtain hanging over a window; a quilt draped over a tree; the cracked surface of a door. “I’m doing less portraiture and working with more space. Using space as a container to hold grief and trauma. I’m trying to be more expansive,” Gibson said of this new approach. The subject matter remains the same, but they’re reimagining how those same themes may be held in a photograph: “I’m thinking about the loss and the space in Northeast Tennessee and Appalachia. The grief that exists in queer community, and particularly with folks in my family, and women in my family. I’m trying to think of how a photograph exists, as a portal and a poem.” 

“Untitled” (2024)

In this new imagining of what a photograph can hold, Gibson has been abandoning their old comforts of structure and planning to try on a slower, more organic approach: “I’m disillusioned and disinterested in ‘this is my plan’, even though my personality is very much ‘this is my plan’. Let’s just give it some space to breathe. So much of my life has been no space to breathe – now this, now this, now this. Now I’m taking some time and some space.”