Phil Underdown
Phil Underdown recently won the Curator’s Choice award in Jen Bekman’s Hey, Hot Shot! competition. I felt an immediate connection with Underdown’s work when I saw the announcement and have been spending a lot of time on his website since then. Here are a few images from his winning entry, The Trapper’s Lament:
Phil Underdown, from The Trappers Lament
Phil Underdown, from The Trappers Lament
Phil Underdown, from The Trappers Lament
I particularly appreciate Underdown’s project statement for this work. He leads us into the pictures without trying to overwhelm us with jargon and big ideas. The work is very personal, and his writing reflects that.
Images from some of his other projects below:
Phil Underdown, Grassland #188, from Grassland
Phil Underdown, Grassland #45353, from Grassland
Phil Underdown, Field 002.3 November 2004, from The Field
Phil Underdown, Tent Caterpillars 002.7 September 2006, from The Field/Tent Caterpillars
Much of Underdown’s work fits very well within the notion of “The New Pastoral” that I wrote about recently. There is an emphasis on open space and the beauty of light and natural forms, while never ignoring the human presence in the landscape. In The Trapper’s Lament, Underdown seeks to reconcile his own difficult decisions in the face of a destructive beaver population near his home. The viewer is exposed to hard truth in the warm glow of the Adirondack sunshine. In Grassland, he looks closely at a decommissioned airfield that is gradually reverting to a natural state. The wetland-turned-airfield-turned-grassland will never be exactly what it was; it is now uniquely the product of a collaboration between humans and nature.
Of course, I can’t ignore my personal connection to this work either. This is a landscape that I love, and Underdown is looking for insight into many of the same questions that I have. It is work that simultaneously reverential, curious, and critical; beautiful without being cloying. Underdown is doing everything that I love about landscape photography, and I will be following his work closely in the future.
May 12, 2010