One year of Outer Lands
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?
New work in Fraction Magazine
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.
Spring Fever
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!
Photo Reads
Over the last couple of days I’ve been collecting links to some of my favorite longer-form articles, essays, blog posts, and interviews about photography on a new blog called Photo Reads. I can’t promise to update it every day, but I do spend quite a bit of time online looking for stuff like this anyway, so I thought I would share the results with everyone else.
If Twitter is more your thing, there’s a Twitter account too. Same stuff, different format.
The most recently posted article about Joel Sternfeld is a pretty interesting read. I love coming across stuff like this.
Lee Friedlander
“The subject of landscape as a photographic possibility is both pleasurable and very difficult. The subject itself is simply perfect, and no matter how well you manage as a photographer, you will only ever give a hint as to how good the real thing is. We photographers don’t really make anything: we peck at the world and try to find something curious or wild or beautiful that might fit into what the medium of photography can hold.”
-Lee Friedlander, from his introduction to Lee Friedlander Photographs Frederick Law Olmstead Landscapes
I have been pecking away at the world myself and have a few photographs from the past winter to show for it. I’ll have something to share soon, I hope. I’ve been having some trouble with the weather these last few weeks, so mostly I just drive around Long Island and take notes on places I would eventually like to photograph if I ever get the chance.