by Lena Morgan
images by Maria Muir,
Laurie Z Divine Photography (lauriezphotography.com),
& Pete Rasmussen (instagram.com/sandhillfarmsutah)
Story is our first human connection.
It is the ancestral thread of tradition and information carried through time by storytellers.
Kati Greaney is a storyteller who finds deep meaning from listening and weaving her story with others through photography, video and mixed-media art.
She began in photography by capturing split seconds of people’s lives during celebrations and struggles. As a photographer, she observes these moments from behind the camera, capturing images of connection and relationship. Kati is attracted to the human condition; to understanding people at their most authentic, unedited moments.
The ability to connect with people, to hold space for emotions, and to be present in these moments creates comfort and calm energy for her subjects. She reads the undercurrents that run through a shoot; the unspoken conversations that may create tension. Kati soothes that current. Her goal is to allow the photographed to be their most present, authentic and comfortable in a shoot.
I had the opportunity to speak with Kati about her experiences. Her passion for connection and understanding comes through in her voice:
I feel something shared with the people that I photograph. It feels like I am seeing and expressing parts of myself through them. There are many layers beneath the surface of a person and that is what I want to unearth and relate to.
These hidden layers are often what connect us all.
Kati Greaney
The thread of Kati’s storytelling continues into her documentary film work, providing a platform for stories to speak for themselves in moving, real time. Chasing the light and shadow of filming, Kati has followed her work to distant lands to stand witness to lives lived outside of her experience.
Early in her career, Kati found a strong focus on the resilience of women around the world. She photographed the reconstruction after the South Asian tsunami in South India. She documented free health care clinics throughout the United States; cultural resistance in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil; and organic agriculture throughout Cuba. Most recently, she has spent two years documenting the life of a transgender immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico. Alejandra’s story attracted Kati because of her amazing resilience in the face of so many obstacles.
Kati explains:
I’ve always felt connected to people’s struggles even when their experience was very far from my own. The most interesting, generous and alive people that I know are the ones who have lived through what most would view as tremendous hardship.
Kati Greaney
Authenticity is not always comfortable. The raw, exposing moments in people’s lives, experiencing the depths of loss or the heights of joy, are palpable manifestations of our humanity. There is a secret language to loss that you feel when you encounter it. A language revealed through the eyes of the photographed; a knowing between experienced souls. While Kati’s work in film and photography often focus on the struggles of others, her most recent mixed-media art turns the lens on herself as she overcomes a deep personal tragedy.
Kati with husband Pete Rasmussen and son Jorro at Sandhill Farms
Eden Utah – Sandhillfarms.org
In September of 2017, Kati, her husband, Pete, and their young son, Jorro, excitedly prepared for another child. They created space for his birth, his life, in their home and their hearts. Three weeks before his due date, Kati stopped feeling movement from her once active baby. The doctor confirmed what she feared, there was no longer a heartbeat.
Her body simultaneously carried her life and his death. Although pressed to let them take the baby immediately, she and her family needed time to process and prepare for this kind of birth. She gave birth the next day. A birth rich in love, in honoring, in grace. She could feel his spirit fill the room even though it existed outside the vessel of his body.
Throughout the birthing process, Kati intuitively felt held by her ancestors, the spirit of women, the essence of mothers. She felt the connective thread of women who lost children, she embodied the primal ache that follows. The baby looked perfect, still. His name called to her husband… Cedar. Cedar, the ancient tree that carries prayers to the spirit realm. She was the vessel through which Cedar experienced a body, bound to hers. Safe. Warm. Connected.
Even in her deep grief, Kati immediately knew she had a choice to make; to connect or to disconnect from the world. She chose connection. Immersion. Awakening. She dove into healing, immersing herself in creation. For her, the birthing process offered time to share experience with the soul that she felt so present around her, Cedar, and a place to begin the journey of healing.
There is patience in the pace of creativity I found a way to be calm and present.
Kati Greaney
Art is powerful and, for Kati, a grace and a gift born from this devastating birthing experience. Historically, Kati told stories of big life moments. Now her own raw, exposed story evolves into expression. Through multimodal art, she translates her truth and unearths visions of the innate, ancestral connection between birth and death. The imagery in her art mirrors her personal journey.
Time spent collecting the pieces allows healing connection to and with nature; drawing upon the gifts of our Mother, our Earth; allowing the images to present themselves. Kati lives her life to the edges and understands the depth present in her previous works.
When we speak of her catalyst to understanding, there is peace in her voice. The kind of calm you experience after a storm. Gratitude weaves through her voice as she describes the gift of carrying, and giving birth to Cedar. Love surrounds each word as she describes the honor of sharing the experience of his life, and his death, through her own body.
The story of Cedar’s life and death is sacred, personal, raw. It has given her access to understanding the depth of loss and the unabashed emotion she captures through photography and videography. Where she once was able to hold space without fully understanding the depth, she now recognizes it from experience. She speaks the language of uncensored emotion she found through her immersion in her process of loving and losing Cedar.
Kati’s innate abilities to read the undercurrents of humanity expanded from observation to knowing. Cedar’s i8 life broadened her vocabulary of connection, deepened her ability to hold space, and made the threads of art, observation, and connectivity available to her in an expanse of understanding.
When I look back, I can see the intensity in the faces of the people I photographed. It is easy to see suffering. Now, I can see depth.
There is patience in the pace of creativity, I have found a way to be calm and present in my artwork. I have shed fear in my life and my art to get directly to the heart of the work that I do.
Kati Greaney
Kati now brings this path of healing to other women through workshops, blending the sacred, healing power of nature with the gift of expression and transmutation of emotions through art. Workshops are available in Eden Utah, cocooned in the Wasatch Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, and in Santa Cruz California, nestled near the ocean.
Death and birth are our only absolutes in this life. The beauty of this story, for me, is the comfort that can be found within those mirror images, death and birth. Instead of running from her pain, Kati received every gift available through this experience.
It is Kintsugi of the spirit. Kintsugi is the Japanese tradition of repairing broken pottery with gold dust lacquer so that the breaks can be seen. The wounds, the scars, the healing are visible in what was once broken. Like Kati’s art, all individual stray pieces, remnants of wood adrift in the ocean, single stones and shells, all fuse together to create a whole image of mother and child. Where Kati was broken, her art reveals her scars and precious healing.
Death Before Birth
Life is a cycle
Kati Greaney
birth death birth death birth death birth death
death is birth
birth is death
Continuous transformation.
Becoming
Until we are.
I have held life in my body
I have held death in my body
I have communed with spirit
in a language that is known to all.
The language that a mother speaks to her unborn baby
is the language of spirit.
It is the same language that I now speak in to my deceased son
We all speak this language.
Learning to listen can be the challenge.
The story that I have to share is the story of a mother who lost a child.
It is a story that is stored in the blood and bones of all women.
Our ancestors have known this pain a thousand times.
And I now know it too.
As I transform this pain,
my ancestors move with me.
Making my art has given me a vessel to pour my grief through.
As I paint and glue and create,
My pain magically becomes pure love.
This art is dedicated to those who melded me back from liquid to solid form.
You know who you are…infinite love.
Learn more about Kati by visiting her website
katigreaneyphotography.com