The List–Walker Evans

Continuing on with my list of influential photographers, Walker Evans is an obvious choice.  He has a style so simple and clean that it seems to claim to be no style at all, merely the simple truth.  I think of Robert Adam’s line that a sense of truth is the most sensuous of all the sensibilities–Walker Evans convinces us that he saw, and is showing us, the truth.

This image was made for the Farm Security Administration, and so is available through the Library of Congress–I managed to purchase an old contact print of this image, and it hangs in my home.

This image is published in a book called Walker Evans:  Photographs for the Farm Security Administration, 1935-1938, which shows all the Walker Evans images available from the Library of Congress.  There are a total of 488 images in this catalog, predominately done with an 8×10 view camera, although some of them were clearly done with a 35 mm camera.  There are variations in the quality of the images–not every picture succeeds as well as the one above–but the number of strong images is striking.  It is astonishing what can be accomplished in just a few images, when the camera is in the hands of someone like Walker Evans.

And, of course, Walker Evans never came to Fairbanks, but maybe he would have made an image like the one above, if he had.

Atget in Alaska

Eugene Atget never traveled to Alaska (and I’ve never been to Paris or France), so on one level it is impossible to directly imitate his work here.  But sometimes, when looking at an image I’ve made, I recognize how looking at his pictures has allowed me to see something in this landscape that I think I would have missed were it not for the gift of his pictures. Sometimes I’m even so inspired by him to digitally “tone” the images to something resembling the gold toned albumen prints he made…

Lake in Rain, Richardson Highway, 2004

Lake and Mountains, Tok Cut Off, 1994

The influence of Atget on my work include the selection of the 8×10 camera as the weapon of choice for my landscape work.  While this camera can be incredibly slow in the field, it allows (forces) contemplation during composition, and also rewards the effort with a robust, meaty image that carries the precision of the light.

The List–Eugene Atget

When I first began photographing in the 1970’s, my photographic ideal was defined by National Geographic, but when I took a class in the Art department at the small college I was attending, I was exposed to other kinds of photographs.  The photographer that most mystified me then was Atget.  The pictures I saw from him were sometimes cracked and peeling, and parts of the images were badly out of focus.  The photographs, however, are full of moods and memories.  Atget worked for about 30 years, and shot somewhere around 8,500 negatives, all glass plates, and all shot with a large camera on a tripod.  He owned only three film holders, which allowed him to make only 6 exposures per day.  Often he worked with early morning light, full of mists and flare.  Over the past 30 years, there have been many new books of his work, including a wonderful volume by Szarkowski now out of print and heading to the collectible department. Unlike many other photographers who seem to have a handful of compelling images but weaken the more one looks, every new book, every new picture adds a bit more to my understanding of his work.

Robert Adams

As a young photographer (long ago), someone once told me that I should be able to name ten photographers who’s work I admire.  I recently sat down to write a list of the ten photographers I admire, and found my list far longer than that–but the one at the top of the list is Robert Adams.

Robert Adams

I first became aware of Robert Adams in the early 1980’s, right as I was beginning to make photographs.  What struck me then (and still does) was his unflinching gaze at the world, how his pictures always looked the way the world was, which was not necessarily the way that other pictures looked.  I’ve managed, over the years, to acquire all of his books (there are about twenty of them by now), and many of them confused me when I first saw them–the pictures often appeared uninteresting and sometimes willfully unattractive.  It often takes me many repeated viewings over many years before his pictures come alive–but they always do–and once they come alive they become the most amazing pictures I’ve ever seen.

Kerstin Reading

His most recent work, Turning Back, is the perfect example of his ability to look unflinchingly at the world around him.  Most of the photographs in the book are of the forests near his home in western Oregon, and many of them show the devastation caused by clear cutting (and it is hard not to recognize now that the lumber must have been going to build houses for people who couldn’t afford them…), landscapes so devastated by commerce that the result seem more the product of madness and war.   But it wasn’t until this summer, when I visited some Alaskan forests ravaged by spruce bark beetle damage, and I came back to his work that suddenly it came alive–the photographs he includes of old trees and of his wife reading poetry next to the stumps of the old growth, the ghosts of what once was, and the willful attempt to find beauty despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

More Back Pages

I came to Alaska 22 years ago, to spend a summer, and arrived intending to photograph what remained of the Alaskan Wilderness.  I resolved to tell the truth about what I saw.

Selawik River At Upinigvik, Late May, 1990

When I moved to Fairbanks in late 1991, I continued to photograph as honestly as possible.  The picture below is a photograph I made several days after arriving in Fairbanks.

Peger Road, Fairbanks, November 1991

I feel very lucky to have arrived in a place and time when it is possible to find a subject worth spending a lifetime exploring.  A place where it it is still possible to make an honest beautiful picture, and honest pictures that ache with bone numbing cold and darkness.

Beauty in Landscapes

Tonsina River, 2005

For a photographer, the major problem of the Alaskan Landscape is this:  the place is beautiful, and almost everyone who comes to photograph here is immeditely overwhelmed by the infinite number of things to point a camera at.  It’s almost as if all the beautiful lies that Ansel Adams told about the landscape are true, but only here…

Burned Trees, Near Nenana, January 2008

But there are also reminders of the damage we do, even here, like the fire damaged forests along the roads, the result of climate change.  Even the picture of the river above shows the river flooding, from accelerated melting of the glaciers.

For me, the landscape is a way to contemplate both the damage we have done, and the beauty that still remains.  After twenty years here, I finally understand what Bob Adams means when he calls the landscape redemptive:  it a place that both records our mistakes, but also heals and forgives.

The back story

Tuesday evening I had dinner at Ben Huff’s place–Adam was there too–mostly the point of the evening was to talk about the Homer photofest, which I skipped this year…  I almost made it–my wife and son and I skipped town because of the smoke–we headed towards Homer, but somehow I never made it there, got hung up at Bird Point on Turnagain Arm, Whittier, the Kenai Refuge, and the Cook Inlet beach at Nikiski…

Bird Point, August 7, 2009

Cruise Ship, Whittier, August 8, 2009

Portage Glacier, August 8, 2009

Spawning fish, August 8, 2009

Beach Rocks, Captian Cook State Park, August 9, 2009

Equisetum, Kenai NWR, August 9, 2009

Lillies, near Seward, August 10, 2009

As might be apparent from these images, I’ve got a soft spot for the landscape of Alaska.  But most of this work I’ve done in the landscape over the past 20 years is with an 8×10 view camera, a slow laborious way of making pictures.  I’ve not posted a single 8×10 black and white landscape to this web site–somehow blogging seems more suited to taking pixels than grains, and that the web moves too fast, the black and white images demand a stillness to view…

Turn Lake, Sterling Highway, August 10, 2009

The Smoke

There were wildfires in Alaska this summer, starting about July 4 with lightening strikes, but growing as the weather was hot with no rain.  By the evening of August 5, things had gotten pretty bad, so my wife and I decided it was time to leave town, looking for cleaner air…

Heading down Crest Drive, Fairbanks

Farmers Loop and Steese Highway

Thick smoke in Fairbanks, 8/5/09

Ambulance and smoke

As we were leaving town, rain began to fall.  The next day, the smoke and steam shut down the town.  But we were gone, south…

Another great shopping cart photo

Another great shopping cart image...

I’ve been photographing shopping carts for more than 20 years now…  This one is from today.

Smoke gets in your eyes

Another great iPhone photo–and, God, isn’t the smoke awful?