How Rebecca Norris Webb’s Night Calls Can Change the Way You See Photography and Family Bonds
Welcome to this edition of [book spotlight]. Today, we uncover the layers of 'Night Calls,' by Rebecca Norris Webb (published by Radius Books). We'd love to read your comments below about these insights and ideas behind the artist's work.
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to follow in your father’s footsteps, literally and figuratively? That’s exactly what Rebecca Norris Webb did in her latest project, Night Calls. Driving through the dark, rural roads of Indiana, she retraced her father’s house calls as a small-town doctor, capturing the quiet moments of care and memory in a way only a daughter could. Through her poetic blend of photography and personal reflection, she captures the quiet moments where life begins and ends, exploring the delicate bonds of family and memory.
Inspired by W. Eugene Smith’s iconic Country Doctor photo essay, Rebecca approaches the story from a daughter’s perspective, reflecting on her father’s work and legacy. The result is a deeply moving collection that weaves together words and images, inviting us to look at family, care, and landscape with fresh eyes.
What inspired you to undertake the project Night Calls, and what motivated you to retrace your father’s house calls through Rush County, Indiana?
Years ago when I was studying photography at ICP, I first came across W. Eugene Smith’s noted photo essay, “Country Doctor.” I was immediately drawn to the subject, Dr. Ernest Ceriani, who was only a few years older than my father. I remember thinking to myself, “How would a woman tell this story, especially if she happened to be the doctor’s daughter?”
How has your background as a poet influenced your approach to combining text and photography in Night Calls, and what unique perspective do you believe it brings to the narrative?
Originally a poet, one of my creative obsessions has been interweaving words and images in my ten books. Often, I’ve been inspired by various poetic forms. For My Dakota, I was drawn to the elegy; with Night Calls, my model was the epistolary poem. So, the “you” that I’m addressing in the text pieces in Night Calls is my father. Taken together, these handwritten texts create a series of letters to him, told at a slant.
Can you describe the emotional journey of retracing your father’s footsteps through Rush County, especially during the night and early morning hours? How did this experience shape your understanding of your father’s work and legacy?
The project broke open for me emotionally and creatively when I decided to echo my father’s work rhythms, working predominantly at night and in the early morning, when many of us come into the world—my father delivered some thousand babies—and when many of us leave it. Driving half-asleep through this rural county in the dead of night, I could imagine my father driving his 1964 Chrysler 300 on these same narrow roads concerned about a homebound patient, or his Quaker great-grandfather making house calls with his daughter—Dad’s grandmother—in their horse and buggy. Driving in the dark, even time seems to break open. I felt close to my father and to our Quaker relatives, all caretakers of the land, its animals, and its people. For doesn’t the word “care” mean “close attention”?
Your project explores themes of caretaking, memory, and the bond between fathers and daughters. How did these themes manifest themselves during your photographic journey, and what insights did you gain about the interconnectedness of family and landscape?
Among other things, this book is a kind of meditation on being the daughter of a small town doctor in a rural county—a man of few words who is wise, compassionate, humble, and kind. At 104 years old, his presence continues to enrich my life, and he often surprises me with stories I’ve never heard before. Many of the insights that I gained while making this project can be found in the text pieces, including the following:
You taught me to accept whatever came to the door: a bushel of corn, two porterhouse steaks, a bag of bittersweet horehound candy—your favorite—and the suffering each of us carry, sometimes nearly hidden except for something about the eyes. How heavy this homemade lemon pie with its mountains upon mountains of meringue.
I understand you now have a Night Calls exhibition up at the University of Indianapolis. Could you talk a little about the difference between thinking through Night Calls as a book and as an exhibition?
I like the creative challenge of trying to transform the two-dimensional experience of holding a book in one’s hands into the three-dimensional experience of walking through an exhibition. With Night Calls that meant trying to figure out how to translate onto four walls the riverlike flow of the book—which meanders through the past and present and back again; through thunderstorms, fog, and other weathers; and through the memories of my father, his patients, and my own. For me, I decided to anchor this meandering flow around three photographs of sycamores, those riparian trees commonly found along the banks of the Big Blue River, where my father and four generations of our Quaker family lived along. I decided to have Esteban, my printer at Laumont, print the handwritten text piece alongside its accompanying sycamore image, so that the pair could be framed as a single piece. While walking through the exhibition, I particularly like how these sycamore/text pairs stop one in one’s tracks, which seems fitting because these trees with their mottled bark—reminiscent of my father’s freckled hands—are a metaphor for my father with his grounding presence in the lives of our family as well as those of his former patients.
Looking ahead, do you have any plans for future projects that continue to explore the themes and motifs present in Night Calls? If so, could you provide any insights into your upcoming work?
Thanks for asking. I have a new book coming out mid-October, A Difficulty Is a Light, which is my first hybrid poetry book punctuated by 15 of my photographs, with an accompanying exhibition at the Alessia Paladini Gallery in Milan in mid-November. And I just returned from working in the Dakotas on an ongoing project, Badlands. In both of these, I’m continuing to explore the themes of landscape and memory, as well as the geography of loss, both familial and environmental.
To discover more about this intriguing body of work and how you can acquire your own copy, you can find and purchase the book here. (Radius Books, Amazon)
Rebecca Norris Webb
Rebecca Norris Webb is an American photographer and poet known for her evocative storytelling that interlaces photography and text. A former poet, she has authored ten books, including My Dakota and Night Calls, where she draws inspiration from poetic forms to frame her visual narratives. Webb’s work often centers on themes of loss, memory, and familial connections, deeply influenced by her upbringing in a small-town family with strong Quaker roots. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and she continues to explore the intersections between the natural world and human experience through her photography. (Website, Instagram)
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