On Favorite Music

I hadn’t intended on publishing this post this soon, and so close to the heels of my last post, but I feel like this one needs to be published sooner than later. It’ll provide a good foundation for my next coming post to be published on Friday, and many more posts throughout the year/years. It’s a long one, but I hope it’ll be worth your time.

Favorite Artist(s)

Ever since the Fall of 2007 when I first heard them, the Avett Brothers have been my favorite group. It was an instant and immediate promotion, knocking out of contention Led Zeppelin, The Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam, Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie, OK Go, Wilco, and Snow Patrol for that top slot. I still remember sitting at the job site in Wolf Creek above Heber in the passenger seat of Sean’s Isuzu Rodeo. Four Thieves Gone had just come out, which didn’t mean much to me at the time, since they were then totally unknown to me. He played the first track, “Talk On Indolence,” and I’ll never forget the rush hearing Scott machine gun those opening lyrics. I don’t remember any other song that got me so amped up in that way, before or after. Rage Against the Machine and Tool are probably the closest comparison, but the emotions they stirred up were from a more angsty and angry and defiant place. “Talk On Indolence” was a much happier and jubilantly rowdy sound. Brandi Carlile can really give me chills with the emotion in her voice in some songs, “The Story” being the one that gets me most, both in degree and in frequency.

It's now been a little over 17 years since that day (I don’t remember exactly which day, though my last.fm profile shows me that I first listened to them on my iPod or iTunes on September 2), and for that duration of time, the Avett Brothers have been my number one favorite band. Or, nearly that long.

Going further back in my musical history, I was introduced to Iron & Wine during the 2002/2003 school year of college. I can’t say he (Sam Beam) was at the top of my list of favorites. He was possibly in my top 10, but not in my top 5. Even still, he was always a constant in my musical rotation, and continues to be today. In 2011, when Kiss Each Other Clean was released, he was more prominent, especially the song “Half Moon.” That song still really makes me happy. It happened again in 2013 with the release of Ghost on Ghost, and two songs were on repeat a lot afterwards: “Caught in the Briars,” and “The Dessert Babbler.” Love Letter for Fire, a collaboration with Jesca Hoop came out in 2016, and I couldn’t stop listening to “The Lamb You Lost” and “Every Songbird Says.” Beast Epic came out in 2017, and while no specific songs really stood out, the album, as a whole, was, and is fantastic.

But the Avett Brothers were also putting out phenomenal albums and EPs: The Carpenter came out in 2012, and I saw them live for that album’s tour in Salt Lake. Then Magpie and the Dandelion came out in 2013, and I saw them in Seattle. True Sadness came out in 2016, and soon supplanted Emotionalism as my favorite Avetts album, while “Talk on Indolence” remained my favorite Avetts song and my favorite song period.

After 2016, both bands slowed down with their album releases, especially with the Avett Brothers. Iron & Wine put out another collaborative album with Calexico in 2019 but didn’t put out a solo album until May of last year, Light Verse, which is really good. The Avetts put out Closer Than Together in 2019, and only a few songs really hooked me, and then they too were silent until May of last year when they released a self-titled album, which, like the previous, only had a few hooking songs. The Iron & Wine album and the Avetts album were released only a few weeks apart and a feeling I’d been having increasingly since the middle of 2023 began to crystalize into something I could define: my love for the Avetts was slowly waning, and that for Iron & Wine was growing fast.

I started to really give in to introspection: who was really my favorite artist? I thought the Avetts would forever be my favorites. But I was connecting more often and more deeply with Iron & Wine lately. Was it too early; had too little time passed for me to really let another group dethrone the Avett Brothers? Was I making a hasty decision? It was an immediate thing for the Avetts to dethrone Led Zeppelin, why wouldn’t this gradual shift be just as legitimate, just as honest, just as true? Maybe even more so? If Iron & Wine really was my new favorite, who was Number 2? Would the Avetts, by default, occupy that slot? Or do they fall farther than just one position? If they fell more than one, who moves up? And, what, in the first place, is the criteria that makes a group my favorite? What makes a Number 1? 2? 3, etc.? As I write this, I acknowledge that I never really defined those criteria. I sat down and looked at all of the artists in my Apple Music library, along with all the artists listed in my last.fm profile, made a list of my 100 most-played artists plus a few others that go deep into my past—favorite bands from high school—so they could all present their case, to use a courtroom as an analogy. Just going off of instinct, I re-structured my top 10 favorite artists. I came to the conclusion that yes, Iron & Wine is now my favorite artist. So I can say my top ten artists stand as follows:

1. Iron & Wine

2. The Avett Brothers

3. Elliott Smith

4. Interpol

5. Death Cab for Cutie

6. Wilco

7. Secret Machines

8. Cat Power

9. Smashing Pumpkins

10. Grizzly Bear

Spots 3-20 or 25 might be a little fluid, but I think this order might stand for a good while.

I suppose at this time I should try to define what makes a favorite, to put into words what some of those intuitive thoughts and feelings were telling me, how they were guiding me:

• How long have I known this artist? How long have they been a part of my life?

• How much of a part of my life have they been? Has it just been a casual relationship, or one I’ve turned to often?

• Does frequency of listens really matter? What was the intent behind listening?

• How much history do I share with that artist?

• Do I have any deep and significant memories associated with that artist? What are those memories, and what makes them significant?

• How big is this artist’s oeuvre? Does a large or small body of work have a significant influence of their position on my list?

There may be more questions I considered that I either don’t remember or can’t quite articulate still, but this gives a good picture of what was going through my mind and has been going through my mind for at least five or six months, if not longer. And it’s because of this list of questions that it’s so hard to really pin down a definitive top 10 or 25 list of my favorite artists as far as who belongs on it, and which position they occupy.

Favorite Song(s)

Amid this “Who is my favorite artist” “crisis,” I’ve also been pondering what is my favorite song? Is it sill “Talk on Indolence?” That too has also been dethroned this year. Before all this thinking on who my favorite artist was, and then what my favorite song was, I don’t know that I had a definitive list of favorite songs. I only knew that “Talk On Indolence” was my favorite and then a lot of others all contending for various positions, such as “Hard Sun” by Eddie Vedder, “Half Moon” and “The Dessert Babbler” by Iron & Wine, “Farewell Transmission” by Songs: Ohia, “The New” by Interpol, “Transatlanticism” by Death Cab for Cutie. So along with compiling a list of my favorite artists, I’ve tried to put together a list of my favorite songs of all time, and, like the artists list, will surely be a fluid thing, but as it stands now, this is what I have:

1. “Willie,” by Cat Power

2. “Half Moon,” by Iron & Wine

3. “The Dessert Babbler,” by Iron & Wine

4. “Two Weeks,” by Grizzly Bear

5. “Hard Sun,” by Eddie Vedder

6. “Ain’t No Man,” by The Avett Brothers

7. “The New,” by Interpol

8. “Transatlanticism,” by Death Cab for Cutie

9. “I’m the Man Who Loves You,” by Wilco

10. “When the Stars Go Blue,” by Ryan Adams

Do you see what is not on the list? Do you see how far down that list is the artist that was once my favorite of all time? To say it was a struggle to come up with this list and to realize that “Talk On Indolence” wouldn’t make the cut would be like saying the ocean is damp. Among the considerations listed above regarding what constitutes a favorite, was what message the song carried, and what emotions were stirred up. I also had to take into consideration melodies, harmonies, tunes, instrumentation, vocals, lyricality (a song can have a good message or meaning, but told through or with poorly written lyrics). In all this contemplation, I’d realized that “Talk On Indolence” needed to make way for other Avetts songs to rise to the top, as far as what the song means to me. That song is my most played ever: I’ve listened to it over 500 times, as shown by my last.fm data to date. But again, does play count alone rank my favorites? The answer, if you haven’t deduced by now, is a resounding “no!”

Around April I played “Willie” by Cat Power. Actually, I played that whole album, The Greatest. When I came across that album in 2007 (it came out in 2006), I played it on repeat several times a day. It was like a soothing balm to my soul in the chaos and rough day-to-day pace of framing houses. “Willie” was/is such a great song: the story of two lovers who couldn’t be separated, beautiful lyrics sung beautifully by Chan Marshal’s soft, yet strong voice, the wonderful saxophone guiding the melody along. But over the past 10 years or so, that album wasn’t a regular feature in my musical choices or rotation, so when I really listened to it in April, a flood of memories came back, and those same feelings of calm and tranquility washed over me. It only took a few listens to realize that that song belonged in the top spot, and should have remained there the whole time. Now married, and with two boys, it just touched my soul: I love Gina with my whole self, and Tommy and Jonah too, and that song stirred up all the feelings of love and joy that I have for them. It’s not the number one song I turn to when I’m pining for her—that song is “Islands in the Stream” covered by Feist and Constantines. But “Willie” is now firmly at the top of the list of favorites, then the two by Iron & Wine are equally firm in their respective positions. At least for now. As I’ve said, these things are fluid, and life changes the more it goes on, and who knows what song or songs will have a profound impact on my in a year or 10?

New All Songs Playlist

And now the final topic. I’ve listened to the All Songs Considered podcast from NPR since late 2005 or early 2006, I’m not totally sure. But ever since then, I’ve kept and curated a playlist of the songs I’ve added to my library that were discovered through and because of that podcast. It was (I know I’m spoiling things a bit by using the past tense here) 18 or 19 years old, and I don’t know how many songs had been added to it. That playlist was a representation of all of my discoveries and my separation from mainstream record labels, and artists: pretty much all the stuff you hear on top 40 radio stations over and over. So when that playlist somehow got inadvertently deleted in August last year, I was devastated. And frustrated. All of that history was gone. So many lone songs in my music library were now orphaned. I knew many of the songs that were in that playlist, but there were so many more that I rarely ever played unless I listened to that playlist, but still really enjoyed listening to. Luckily I had duplicated part of that playlist on Spotify, but that only spanned about 4 years of those musical discoveries. I still have no idea how that playlist got deleted. I had been updating it and adding some new songs to it, and when I went to add a song after having added a few songs to it, it was gone.

I mourned the loss for a few days (not to sound overly dramatic), wondering how to proceed. Do I reconstruct it? How? Do I just make a new one and it would only have the songs I’d discovered since the creation of this new one? I decided on reconstruction. I knew that the podcast has had an accompanying blog since it’s inception, so, along with the partially duplicated Spotify playlist, I went as far back as I remembered listening to that podcast—in reality, I’m sure I went back a little earlier—and made a spreadsheet to which I added every artist and song that seemed remotely familiar. Then, using that spreadsheet, I’ve been able to cross reference songs that are in my library and reconstruct the playlist. But I learned very early on in the process that songs would be in this new playlist that hadn’t been in the first incarnation, or even my library, originally, and I had to accept that this new one would not be as organic as the previous one. There are songs in this new playlist by artists I came to know and enjoy at a later point in their career that I had not added to my library and original playlist. There are songs from my high school years, classic rock songs, that I didn’t add to the original playlist because they were not “discoveries” but now exist in this new one. Both of those statements show that now this new playlist is a much more accurate representation or cross section of my overall musical tastes, and therefor I’m much more excited about this playlist than I was at the beginning. I don’t know if I can say that I’m more excited about this playlist than the old one, but I’m excited about it.

You can scroll through and/or listen to the first 100 songs on the playlist below. At the time of publishing this post, the playlist as a whole sits at 1051 songs, and I’m adding to it regularly.

I’ve written about music here before, perhaps not as much as I could have, but certainly not as much I should have. Music is such a big part of my life and it informs my creativity so much that I really have no shortage of material there for writing about my thoughts and feelings about creativity, about what sparks such deep emotion in a song or album. What memories are stirred up, what lyric touched me in some way, how that song or artist informs my photography or life in general. So follow along for my humble thoughts, opinions and reactions on and to all that has been discussed.

Music and Me

I love music.

I know I’m not unique in this aspect, so why bring it up? Why devote a post on my photography blog about my love of music?

There was a recent period in my life when I wasn’t the voracious music listener I was before and after. The only time I listened to music in any degree was while I was driving. But last year I gradually paying more attention to my iTunes library, and one of my resolutions for 2019 is to really get back into music.

I’m going to make perhaps a long-winded correlation, but hear me out: In the past 12 to maybe 18 months I’ve felt a resurgence in my confidence as a photographer (this whole topic of confidence deserves its own blog post, which I may or may not write), and I feel like my return to searching for new music and listening more often has been a big contributor to that change I’ve seen in my creatively, especially over the last month and a half. It was in early- to mid-2014 that I stopped searching out new music and listening so much, and it was around that same time that I felt a decline in my confidence level.

Music has always been one of my favorite things. I love the memories that certain songs can bring to the surface; I love the excitement of hearing an old favorite I may have neglected or ignored for a long time; I love the thrill of hearing a brand new song that stirs up emotion in whatever way, be it happiness, or sadness, or rowdy, or hopeful.

And while I’m on this topic of music, and its impact on my creativity, music has been a part of my photography. I’ve often thought of what a soundtrack for projects or individual photographs would sound like: what style of music would it be? would it be a score? who would compose it? what artists and songs would be on it? During the years of 2015-2017 and part of 2018, whenever I went out photographing I played music in the car that had an impact on me when I was in college or during my time in grad school. Artists like Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie, Wilco, The New Pornographers, and Elliott Smith. My thinking was that that music inspired me and helped channel my creativity back then, so it should inspire me now. I felt my work was strong then, so listening to that same music should help me make strong work now. Right? I even made a playlist with all of those old favorite songs and albums.

Looking back on that period, I feel like I was making work that was trying to by like the work I was making during college. I feel like I was trying to make that old music inform my present-day creativity. In mid-2018 I realized this, and thought “it’s 2018. I’m not in my early or late twenties. I need to be making work that is more authentic to my 2018 self. Why not update my music?” And once I did that, once I started playing the music that was inspiring me currently, today, I think that was when my confidence began to really return. I had, without stating specifically, decided to live in the present and look to the future as an artist, and turn to those things that are currently inspiring, informing, and influencing me. I’m not trying to make the music I listen to be responsible for my success or failures, or ups or downs as an artist. I just mention all this to illustrate the music’s power to influence me.

The lesson I’ve learned (and maybe it’s still sinking in) is that I’m not the same person I was when I was in college. I’m not the same artist I was then, or in 2008. I’m not the same artist I was a month ago, nor am I, I think it would be safe to say, even the same artist I was yesterday. We’re all progressing—or, god forbid, digressing—and we need to embrace that progression, grow with it, and learn from it. It might do us good to take a minute periodically and identify (if it’s not obvious) what is causing that growth.

Influences

I'm reading Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams again. It's one of my go-tos when I need to figure things out, whether it be where to go with an entire project, or help me clarify my      thoughts on things. Adams' book, Why People Photograph is another resource I turn to often.

In the essay, "Making Art New," Adams tackles that gremlin artists face to keep their work fresh, keep improving, and perhaps even reinventing themselves.

A section of the essay begins, "The question, 'what is new?' implies a more hopeful question, 'what is better?'" (WPP 79) Then goes on to ask by what mark we measure progress, and offers "more Truth and/or Beauty" as a measure, but then points out the challenge this can be, and says he is "unacquainted with any first-rate painter or photographers who believe that their pictures will be more beautiful than those of Rembrandt." But Adams acknowledges that sometimes our predecessors were wrong, or at least viewed to be wrong, by those influenced by them. Though seen to be wrong, we are never free from their influence: "...as long as we respond to our forebears, they are with us." 

It is my belief that we are influenced by our predecessors always, whether we respond directly to them or not, for it is that response to an influence or denial or divorce from it that shapes us, informs our current work, and guides us in our quest to improve.

“Isn’t it necessary for [art] to be…different from what has gone before?” Adams asks. Then begins to answer with this gem:

...All art comes out of a background of convention established by one's predecessors. Every serious artist borrows not only from those conventions, but from the particular insights of individuals he admires. This is unavoidable because, as the painter Mark Tobey observed, "No young artist can grow unless he emulates someone bigger than himself"—we all start small. Thus, Cézanne, for example, borrowed from Delacroix, and Matisse from Cézanne and Delacroix. It sometimes even seems as if the greatest artists borrow most. Certainly none of those just mentioned ever tried to hide his dependence on his sources; each, great as he was, understood that creations out of nothing are possible only for God. We seem in the end to be left with a series of revivals. (WPP 81)

In order for us to grow, in order for us to even begin learning, it is necessary to emulate and borrow. But, as Adams later states, “No serious artist would…ever set out simply to repeat another.” Sooner or later, we must be as Matisse who said “I have accepted influences but I think I have always known how to dominate them.”

52 Photographers is Back!

I began the 52 Photographers Blog circa 2007-2008 as a way to expand my photographic/artistic vocabulary and get to know many more photographers than I already knew and share the work of artists that I enjoyed looking at and who were currently influencing my own work.

I don't think—actually I'm pretty sure—I actually ever made 52 posts, as I got super busy with other things. Posts became spaced out, and clustered, and then it finally died off, and I let the domain expire.

Then in 2016, I thought of resurrecting the idea, but instead, decided to just write blog posts here on Departures with no set schedule or plan. For 2018, I debated with myself whether or not I would fully resurrect 52 Photographers or not, and I ultimately decided to take the plunge, and here we are!

While 52 Photographers will be heavily photography-oriented, I've come across artists working in other media that I am going to want to share with you! I can't wait to share the work of so many really great photographers! Head on over to 52Photographers.com and follow along! Posts will come in every Sunday evening.

Julie Anand & Damon Sauer

A little while ago LensCulture announced their 2017 Exposure Award winners. Among the superb photographers represented were a pair who, for the last 12 years, have been working collaboratively. Ground Truth: Corona Landmarks by Julie Anand and Damon Sauer immediately resonated deeply in me, and the images and concepts behind this body of work have been bouncing around my mind ever since.

I admit to feeling a small amount of jealousy when I first saw the photographs. It was another of those "I wish I'd thought of that!" moments. But I'm glad  those moments occur, because they are, in the end, motivating. They make me think about my own work in new ways; how to look at the world in new ways.

I emailed the artists with several questions about the Ground Truth work, and I was pleased to receive a quick response from Julie. Here is our exchange:

Andy Duncan: Can you explain a little about the origins and inspiration for this project and how it came to be?

Julie Anand: Damon read an article conjecturing about strange marks in the Gobi desert hypothesized to be used for satellites and it linked to a single site in the Arizona desert. We made a field trip and eventually found more and eventually Damon mapped the entire system using Google Earth. Meanwhile we did research and found that in 2004 a pilot had discovered them from above and linked them to the Corona project. So we started exploring them photographically. Eventually we started using a 16ft boom. At first they were pretty straight documents and we went around photographing markers that way. Then we got a grant for a new camera and had to redo all our work, so we rethought it and turned them into vertical landscapes. We did that for a while. Finally, we added the layer of looking at what satellites are present now. It took a couple of years for us to develop this methodology. It wasn’t our first draft by any means.

AD: How long have you been working on the project, and how much longer do you think it'll take before you consider it to be finished?

JA: We’ve been working on it for about three years, and as I mentioned above, we went through several different versions of how to explore these markers. Our website isn’t up to date (we have a fresh batch of images in progress right now), and we’re still negotiating what it will mean to be finished.

AD: How do the paths of the satellites influence the composition of the photograph? And visa versa? Or do they?

JA: The satellite paths are a chance operation with respect to the photographs. We have no idea what they will look like when we make our images.

AD: Do you make the photograph and then look up and superimpose the satellite paths, or look at the paths first in your tracking software and then make a photograph with the satellites' paths in mind for the composition?

JA: The photograph comes first and that gives us the data for plugging into the software to determine the satellite paths.

AD: How many photographs do you make at each marker?

JA: We usually walk around and decide what would make the most interesting vantage and make a couple of different versions. Each final image we make is stitched from about 5 images. It’s a fairly big set up with two tripods, sandbags, 16ft boom, tethered laptop etc…precisely measured…so we’re not very “casual” about moving around, but we know that getting to the sites takes a lot of resources and energy so we try to give ourselves options in the field.

AD: How many markers have you photographed so far? Are they all still extant? Looking at the map on the website, I see some blue marks and some green marks. Can you explain the significance of the two? Am I correct in assuming that the green marks indicate the marker at that location is missing for whatever reason?

JA: We have a fresh batch we’re working on right now. When we are through with those, we should be at around 40 completed images. The map is an important part of the project that represents significant research. We plan to show the map in the exhibitions with our images. The map has several layers of things going on. Green marks are ones in which there is no photographic record of any kind available for the site. Otherwise, light colored crosses reveal our images, or dark blue crosses have embedded color Google Earth historic images or black and white aerial images that Damon researched if it wasn’t on Google Earth at all. But just because we’ve researched a historic aerial or historic Google Earth image doesn’t mean the marker is there today. I created a spreadsheet of all the sites and about 100 markers have been removed.

AD: Are there any markers that you've decided to not photograph because of lack of visual interest? Or has there been an additional purpose of cataloging each marker?

JA: We haven’t edited out sites at this point because we’re never quite sure what they will look like once the satellite map is created. Since that’s a chance operation, sometimes even very plain ground views produce stunning line drawings. We’re still deciding about what we think “complete” should mean for this project. But intuitively we feel we’re not finished, so we keep working. We have other things we want to try as a parallel practice to the photographic typology.

AD: Are these markers still used by the Air Force and CIA? If there are some missing, I can't think that they are still used, otherwise they would be better maintained. Also, if some are missing, and this grid is no longer used for satellite calibration, how are satellites calibrated today? Is there a new grid of markers somewhere to serve this purpose? Or is that information possibly classified?

JA: The project was decommissioned in 1972 and the markers have been decaying in the desert ever since. The Corona project was declassified in the 1990’s. We have an appointment to talk with a satellite scientist to find out more about how these were used, to help us interpret patterns in our sky maps we are creating, and to learn more about contemporary calibration systems.

AD: How did the government acquire the land, with the Corona Project being a secret joint program? Was the land bought from the then owners of that land?

JA: The Army Map Service leased the land in 100 foot parcels from land owners...There is a lot of speculative stuff online and we need an actual historian to do some work on this field. We are looking for a historian collaborator.

I'd like to thank Julie here on the blog for taking the time to answer my questions. After reading her answers, I was even more excited about her and Damon's project! I can't wait to see how it progresses! Head on over to their web site at 2cirlcles.org to see the whole collections of photographs. Read their statement. Check out the map, and don't miss the Process video! I love seeing the "behind the scenes" of how artists make their work, and this video really shows how much work goes into making just a single photograph of these landmarks.

I found a Youtube video of a presentation Julie gave in 2015 at WSU. It's worth watching if you've got a little extra time to spare. You can also check out an article about the Julie and Damon's work on Wired Magazine: These Concrete Relics in Arizona Helped Satellites Spy on the Soviets—Wired Magazine

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Calibration Mark X47 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AC47 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AE48 with Satellites

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Calibration Mark AC48 with Satellites

Nils Karlson

A couple months ago, the Film Shooters Collective Instagram feed featured Nils Karlson. It was "love at first sight." I tapped through to his feed, and followed him. Ever since, I've loved seeing his images come up while scrolling through my Instagram.

Karlson lives in Germany, and uses a mix of medium format cameras, and pinhole cameras, and shoots on a variety of color films.

I was immediately attracted to Karlson's aesthetic. The high-key tones, the soft color, selective focus in some images and the tell-tale softness and vignetting of a pinhole photograph in others, give his images an airy, dreamy quality. I feel as though I'm dreaming I'm on the beach, feeling the humid, salty air blow across my skin. In others, it's as though I've been shrunk down to the size of an insect.

He was recently featured and interviewed at the Pinholista, and you can find it here, and you can also see more of his work on his flickr page.

Jake Weigel

At this point in time, I can't remember how I came across the work of Jake Weigel, but I think I must have been looking for more work similar to James Balog and Krista Wortendyke and David Hockney. Nor can I remember exactly when it was, but I think it was towards the end of June. Not that that's really important.

However it was that I came across Jake’s website, I do remember the first image I saw:

Part of his Reconstruction series, Woods gives the viewer the sense of lying on their back, gazing up into the cloudy sky, wondering if the clouds overhead will finally let go of the moisture they are carrying, and nervous that the bare trees will offer no protection should rain begin to fall.

This "photographic collage," as Jake calls it (I myself, don't know whether to call pieces like this collages or mosaics), was different than almost any other I'd seen before. It is from a different perspective than the others, and the photograph is more about story than it is about seeing a forest in a different way.

The concept is pushed even further by using apparently the same image repeatedly to create a whole new composition in itself as in Spiral:

I think this sort of piece requires just the right photograph as a starting point. The way the cables from the pole arc and then “connect” to themselves again in each subsequent frame is what creates the spiral. Another photograph may dictate different treatment, a different pattern.

Head over to his website. He has a very extensive body of work, ranging from medium format film photography to sculpture.

Some Thoughts on Projects

A few days ago, I published a post on the work of Krista Wortendyke. In it, I explained I first saw her work in an email newsletter, and that it really "struck a chord." I didn't really elaborate on that in the post, because I wanted to focus on Krista's work. Today I'd like to talk about the way it affected and has already influenced me and my own photography.

I've mentioned in previous blog posts how the creative impulse has really taken hold of me again and I've begun sweeping the cobwebs out of the recesses of my mind that drove my creative thinking. It’s not that I quit exercising my creativity altogether—I just found different outlets, like tying flies and fly fishing, and I didn’t exercise photographically often at all. Or, I at least didn’t engage in it seriously, or with any real direction. It gradually fell pretty low on the list of priorities. It is true that I would occasionally think about a project that would help me get serious, but that’s as much work I put into it. Add to that the fact that after leaving grad school (the reasons for which I still haven’t ever fully addressed here), I haven’t really been part of a community to offer any valuable feedback or critiques beyond a “thumbs-up” or a “like” on Facebook or Instagram of any work I ever did do in the past several years. And that has been the hardest struggle.

So, as I’ve been going out around Cache Valley to photograph, and reading material to help get my brain in gear, I’ve been wondering and pondering on what to do for a project, and several ideas have popped up. I’ve always thought ever since moving here, about doing something with the Bear River. It’s a heavily exploited resource, so there’s lots I could say with it. But then I remember Craig Denton’s book “Bear River: Last Chance to Change Course” and shy away from a project of my own on the Bear River. That happens to me all the time: I think of a project or subject or process, then learn of or remember that someone else has done that exact thing or something very similar and I give up on whatever plans for a project I may have started to formulate. But I recently heard a quote from Mary Virginia Swanson who said (to paraphrase) that you should photograph the ideas or subjects that come from within. To photograph what you’re passionate about. She went on to say that after a while you will come into your own style. And then I later heard another paraphrased quote from Robert Adams: Art can’t awaken us if it merely copies what we already have. So, the first quote gave me some validation and encouragement to carry out a project that someone perhaps has already done. The second quote gave me the warning I need to not just copy. Which I’ve always had in mind when making photographs (though sometimes I’ve made photographs knowing full well it looks exactly like another photograph from someone who came before). In the Adams quote, he said something about taking what someone has already done (and this is where the real challenge lies) and to make it better. And he’s right. Every turn I take, it seems like I’ve seen something like it to varying degrees before. There’s little in the Arts that hasn’t been done before. Which can be debilitating, because I don’t want to copy. I just need to figure out how to improve upon work that has influenced me. That’s when a voice creeps in my head and says “How are you going to improve upon Mark Klett? or James Balog? or Peter Goin? and the list goes on.

Now let me discuss some thoughts on the project I have swimming around my mind, as well as what is an underlying element to all of my photography. I’ve always been fascinated at the way a photograph can freeze moments of time. Whether the length of that moment of time is only 1/500 of a second, or if three hours passed to make the exposure. My lumens, for example, are exposed anywhere between three hours and a week or more (I’ve done them as long as a month, but I feel like a day-long, or two-day-long exposure is sufficient for what I am trying to achieve). Within that time, the plants I use in the process die, along with any insects or other crawly things that are in the plants’ roots or leaves, and things begin to rot and decay fairly quickly, especially if it’s a hot summer day. The paper really changes from the intense UV light that is exposing it. The viewer may not know just how much time elapsed in the making each print, but the passage of time is a preeminent element in the creation of them. With my “camera photographs” (I use the term here to separate them from the camera-less photographs that lumen prints are), I almost always try to use as slow a shutter speed as possible. Within reason. I’m not usually interested in freezing motion in my photography. I aim to show motion—flowing water, tree branches swaying in the breeze, the streaks of headlights as cars drive by.

Which brings me back around to the photography of Krista Wortendyke, and the chord that was struck. In the blog post I did on her work, I explained (actually, I quoted her artist statement) that her photographs are composed of multi-frame images taken from video games, and photographs found on the internet to make a composite image that blurs the line between what is real, and what is fiction. Upon seeing that photograph in the email newsletter, I knew I had a direction I could take in a project on the Bear River. By making each photograph up of a composite of many photographs, I can show the passage of time in each individual photograph that makes up the whole, as well as the passage of time measured in days, weeks, months or even years, showing the effects of time and changes of seasons of a scene in a single photograph. Any changes in water levels of rivers and streams, the sprouting and death of leaves on trees, and any changes that Man might make on the landscape could all be observed in one image. That email arrived in my inbox at about nine a.m., and I wasn’t able to sit still or concentrate for the rest of the day. My mind was exploding with new ideas and locations to photograph and methods of display. In that post, I explained it wasn’t the first time I’d seen work done the way Krista created her photographs, and that I was familiar with James Balog. Even before I knew of Balog, Tyler Hopkins, a friend from college was doing mosaic-, multi-frame photographs. And since I came across Krista’s work, I’ve discovered a few more photographers working in this similar vein, such as Jake Weigel.

Over the past two or three weeks, I've been out a handful of times to start gathering photographs for finished pieces. I've returned to a few locations on different days, so that the larger photograph has photographs made on two different days.

Here is the first one I started working on, with photos made on two different days, and is by no means finished:

These pieces, as I mentioned above, may not be complete for up to, and maybe even more than, a year, since my goal currently is to include frames from all four seasons, from different times of day, under various weather conditions.

It had been a very long time since a project hit me and got me so excited as this one has made me. Stay tuned for more updates!

Krista Wortendyke

About eight or nine years ago, I created a blog titled 52 Photographers, where I would feature one photographer each week of the year. I don’t remember now just how many posts I made on the blog, but I know I didn’t make it a whole year. The purpose of the blog was to help me seek out photographers I hadn’t seen before to keep the creative juices flowing.

I recently had the thought of resurrecting that blog, but I don’t have the time to make it a weekly thing. So, I’ll make it as much of a regular thing that I post about on this, the Departures Blog. And so, with no further ado, I’ll introduce the first photographer I’ll be featuring: Krista Wortendyke.

One of Krista's photographs was featured in a recent Your Daily Photograph email. The photograph, Untitled_014, from her (re): media project struck a chord in me at the very moment I saw it.

It wasn’t the content of the photograph that grabbed my attention so immediately and completely. It was the way she had pieced multiple images together in a multi-frame mosaic. I had seen seen work in this same approach before though—I have been aware of James Balog’s photographs published in a book titled Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest. But it had been so long since I'd seen or thought of Balog's work, that I'd nearly forgotten all about it, so it was if I were seeing work done like this before, not in terms of content—in this case, a fireball in an unnamed or even unknown desert, presumably from an explosion, and a large, black and gray plume of smoke rising into the sky—but in technique.

(re): media untitled_014

The body of work "is an exploration of the way imagery and information from movies, videogames, newspapers, and the Internet come together to form our perception of war." She goes on to explain: "Explosions are war’s most universal and most spectacular signifiers. We are never falling short of this imagery. I have made use of these magnetizing images to show not only how the lines between fiction and non-fiction blur, but also to show how a mediated experience can become indecipherable from a real experience." I find the concept intriguing, and the implementation is quite apropos to the subject matter.

(re): media untitled_011

I love coming back to these photographs. There are so many things that go unnoticed on a first look because there are is so much imagery to take in in each piece. And with so much of war and violence in the news, the imagery of war has become so commonplace and mundane, and with the quality of graphics and the immersiveness of war video games, it is easy to confuse reality with fiction.

Take a look at Krista's website and other projects here.

*All images used by permission of the artist.