A profile of Midwest photographer Tytia Habing.
I’d still love the flatlands of the Midwest, even if I hadn’t grown up there. I remember the sounds of katydids at night, the cicadas that joined them every few years, the soft amber texture of the dwindling prairie, the smudges of green in the distance, trees too far in the distance to give away their heights.
But my favorite part of the Midwest has always been the sky, and maybe that’s because there isn’t much to get in the way of it. You can spend hours, if you want, watching the same cloud move from one side of it to another.
It’s at once empty, lonely, illuminating, and hopeful. A place that seems so easy to escape that it taunts you, dares you to race from one perfectly flat horizon to the next, on and on until something changes. And in a world that values freedom, adventure, and the lure of Someplace Else, many of us do just that.
Illinois-based photographer Tytia Habing knows this feeling, too, though you may not know it from first glance at her work. Her black and white images of family and rural landscapes call out to Sally Mann and Emmett Gowen as influences, shimmering where the light hits dead birds, bug legs, big-eyed nieces and nephews, late-autumn cornfields, and freckles peeking through sun-worn skin. She shoots candidly and at-will, her favorite 50-mm lens allowing her to be intimate with her subjects while making them as vulnerable as that open sky over them.
Collectively, Tytia’s photographs are the story of a rural Midwestern childhood — particularly that of her nine-year-old son and muse, Tharin. But her photographs portray her own story, too — one of nostalgia for her own childhood, the need for big spaces and tall grasses, for the appreciation of home and how it leaving makes it stronger.
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In her early twenties, Tytia found herself in a place many young people face: unhappy with her career, living alone in suburban Chicago, not wanting to return home but also not sure where to go next. A few additional semesters at school and one spring break trip later, she decided where she wanted to be.
I don’t know much about Grand Cayman, but here’s what I do know: it’s small. Twenty-two miles long, and only 8 miles wide. On a map its shape reminds me of a tiny squid.
For all I don’t know about the island, I certainly understand its appeal. It’s blue and green and white with light, home to the kind of place you see in the background of a new picture frame or on a computer desktop background; a place that attracts thousands of visitors each year — and some of them, like Tytia, come back and stay for much longer.
For sixteen years, she lived and worked on the island as a bartender, making money from the crowds on the cruise ships came for their dozen hours on the beach of Another Caribbean Island, and leave without ever knowing much more.
Money was good, and life was warm and easy. Tytia made friends with people from all over the world, learning about her place in it in the process, as an American, and later, as a wife and mother.
But how long do you have to live somewhere before it feels like home? Shouldn’t sixteen years be enough? For Tytia, it wasn’t. Grand Cayman may have been her liberty from a life she didn’t want, where she made a good living, met her husband Trevor, and brought Tharin into the world. But no matter what she did, that feeling of home never came.
The proof is in her photographs, or maybe the lack thereof. There are millions of photos taken of Grand Cayman every year — but on the island, Tytia rarely found a reason to pick up her camera. Nothing seemed to hold enough meaning.
By the time Tharin was three, the decision to leave was easy. Three-year-olds can adjust to almost anywhere, but why not give them more space to run? The chance to know their grandparents and cousins, if they can, and to catch crawdads in the same creek as their mother?
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Watson, Illinois, is a town of about 4,000 people, just south of Effingham, in the east-central part of the state. On the south side of town is a wooden cabin that sits back from the road, an old Corvette in the driveway, the Little Wabash River nearby.
Stretching out from the cabin are fields that used to yield corn and soybeans, and old buildings that used to house livestock and farm equipment. Her grandmother’s old summer kitchen sits next to the long driveway and is now Tytia’s studio, the original hand-painted flowers still on the floorboards in it’s back corner.
Inside the cabin, Tytia’s mom, Jeanne, is cozy on the couch, next to a fireplace in a living room decorated with family photographs and sun bleached skulls found on their land. A half-mile up the road there’s a green house with a ramp out front that Tytia, Trevor, and Tharin live in now, and further down the road you’ll find more nieces, nephews, and cousins.
This is home, and they’ve been back for over six years now. While picking up her camera has been natural and easy, not everything else has been. Sometimes rural Illinois can feel just as small as that island in the Caribbean. Old friends from high school have changed, or maybe they haven’t. Boredom creeps in, as do sad and uncomfortable conversations about the red flag with the blue x-shape and the white stars that Tharin thinks looks cool and wants to add to his four-wheeler.
But for Tytia, home is more than worth the price of these adjustments. Despite leaving for so long, or perhaps because of it, home means more to her now than ever before. She’s found new and wonderful friends who share her worldview and experiences, and Tharin points out the “bad flag” wherever he sees it.
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Even under the widest of skies, sometimes the comfort of the indoors the lure of technology wins. Inside the green house with the ramp outside half-mile up the road from Tytia’s parents’ cabin, Tharin sits in front of a computer screen playing Minecraft.
I’ve seen Tharin over many years, in images that capture both the energy and emotional complexities of a child — Tharin asleep in a patch of sun, Tharin jumping, Tharin in floaties, Tharin racing go karts. Tharin holding a toy gun, Tharin hiding, Tharin bored, Tharin in awe. Tharin upside down, Tharin crying, Tharin with smoke in his eyes. I wonder if he knows how many people all over the world have seen his face. If he does, his shy and slightly mischievous demeanor, dressed up in sports shorts, a sweatshirt and sandals, don’t give him away.
Tytia tells him his time on the computer is up, and after a quick, half-hearted protest, he knows she’s right. Boots on, jacket zipped, helmet last. He needs help kick starting his four-wheeler, but needs no help once he’s on.
Out, further and further he goes, to the outermost borders of the fields next to their house, until he’s behind a pocket of woods that thumbs from the side of the road. Tytia can’t see him anymore — she doesn’t like it, but she knows he’ll do what he pleases, and that he is safe.
For now, Tytia and her family will stay in Illinois, and Tharin will graduate from the local high school, just like she did. But she knows one day she’ll have to let him go, and she hopes that he does, without too much hesitation. I wonder if she hopes he’ll come back, too.
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