Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, MD, 2010
Wyman Park, Baltimore, MD, 2010
I always love a trip to Baltimore. The Baltimore Museum of Art has a wonderful Courbet, Woodberry Kitchen makes a mean cheeseburger, Normals has some great old books, and Josh and Amber are still the best hosts. Thanks guys!
I’ve been wandering around Red Hook for the last month or so, shooting some night images just to see if anything interesting comes up. I got back a big batch of film yesterday, and most of the photos look like this:
Which is perfectly fine. I kept going, and found a few more that I liked:
They’re all nice enough, but I got the feeling that I wasn’t really connecting with anything… I don’t think these photos lead anywhere exciting.
I shuffled the images around in Lightroom for a little while and something finally hit. Three of the thirty-or-so photos I took last month contain a seed of an idea that feels interesting and needs to be explored further. Now that I see it, those three stick out from the rest like a sore thumb; they look nothing like the photos above. It’s too early to say anything except that I’m excited again, after what feels like a long summer of aimlessness.
I’ve been playing around with my new iPhone for a couple of weeks now, and so far I’m very impressed! I haven’t carried a pocket-sized camera around for a while, but this one is quite good and has got me in the habit again. Here are some photos from the sidewalks of Brooklyn this summer.
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve
“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Hear this poem, and others, ready by the author at speakingoffaith.publicradio.org.
Composite from collected images tagged with “half dome” on Flickr.
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.
I swore off contests sometime last year, with one exception: that I would probably enter Hot Shot in 2010. I can’t say exactly why Hot Shot lures me so—considering the tough competition, I don’t think I stand much of a chance. I wouldn’t mind doing an edition with 20×200, though, so that seems like reason enough.
I got to the part on the application about whether or not I’ve entered before and I had to think back… yes, in fact I did enter, way back in 2007. I have no idea what work I entered, but in hindsight I’m quite sure it wasn’t very good. I’ve put a lot more effort into it this time around, though I’m sure I’ll still be embarrassed looking back in three years.
I’m posting this here as much for my future reference as for anyone else to see. Reading it now, the project statement comes off as a bit awkward, but I wrote that damn thing five times and this was by far the best version.
Dead Horse Bay, Brooklyn, 2010
Near the West Pond, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Queens, New York, 2009
Skier in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York, 2010
New Year's Day, Valley Stream, New York, 2010
Bridle path, Bohemia, New York, 2010
Project Statement:
These images are part of a series called Outer Lands, a survey of the landscape of Long Island. The photographs reflect my effort to reconcile my sometimes contradictory interests in pictorial beauty and the contemporary landscape.
I began my exploration of Long Island along the wild edges of Brooklyn and Queens. I quickly learned that it’s difficult to take a picture in New York City without a plastic bag or a beer can lurking somewhere in the frame. At times I have tried to exclude these elements, but the resulting pictures always nag at my conscience. I have grown to accept that landscape photography in the city involves garbage; in fact, it requires it.
Soon I made my way to the interior of Long Island, where it is common to find patches of unspoiled wilderness. My first pictures of this pastoral landscape came easily, but eventually the nagging returned. The artifice of my endeavor remained, it was simply expressed on a different scale in these open spaces.
I came to realize that a compromise was necessary in order to be satisfied with the work. Many of the photographs in this series embrace the pictorial landscape while simultaneously acknowledging the contradiction inherent within it.
I plan to continue this project indefinitely, returning to many of the same places through different times of year. It is my hope that through intimate familiarity I will produce a work that is both honest and beautiful, a contemporary look at a complex landscape.
I’ve been working on my Outer Lands series for about a year now—a year and three months, to be exact— and I’ve finally got enough photographs to put together a gallery of images to represent the work in progress. Several of these images were included in the set in Fraction Magazine last week. I’ve got more photographs that will likely be included in a future edit, but this feels like a succinct and representative look at the work so far. I would love to hear your thoughts.
More than a year’s work, distilled into 19 images. Looking at these now, I realize that I never could have predicted where this work would take me when I began, and I have only a vague idea of where it will go from here. My shooting is winding down for the season; I probably won’t add very much to this body of work until October or November when the light comes back. (I will be including some spring and summer photos in the series, but not too many.) In the meantime I have a few side projects to look into, a lot of prints to make, a stack of unread books three feet high, a class to finish, and a hundred summer projects to look forward to. Does anyone want to help me paint my house?
I’m very happy to report that I have a series of photographs in the newest edition of Fraction Magazine, which was released online today. This is all new work, which I haven’t shown anywhere before. The issue also includes work from Jessica Todd Harper, Emily Shur, Tom Leninger, and William Greiner.
These photographs are all from inland parks on Long Island, some of which I’ve only recently discovered. I see a lot of potential for future work there.
I’ve been working on these images for more than three months now, and it feels great to finally send them out into the world. Three months doesn’t sound like very much, but when I think back to December and remember the work of researching, shooting, processing, and editing these images, I realize that my process and my perspective on my own work has changed quite a bit in that time. I am a perpetual beginner, where every step still feels significant. I would like to thank David Bram for encouraging me to push myself to create this new work.
The rediscovery of the sun always makes me reach for the SX-70. I don’t know how that works, but it does.
I only have 8 packs of Polaroid film left!