Threads
Last week I had a deep conversation with my good friend and fellow photographer artist, Matt Rainwaters, on the nature of contemporary photography books, specifically as the new way art photography is collected. Surpassing the photographic print. He turned me onto a Alec Soth, a contemporary photo artist who does a video series on photography books where he pulls titles from his rich collection and talks about them as he flips through. I was hooked straight away. There is no ego here, no aggrandizing. He loves the photo book, not as a prized item to be sealed away, but for active consumption. His enthusiasm for the craft of both photography and the book itself comes through with remarkable warmth.
After watching some of Alec’s videos I went looking through my own collection, specifically the book Japan by Michael Kenna, a photographer I’ve loved for years. I got the book in Seattle in 2003 at the gallery showing his work from the book. My mom and I were walking around town and we stumbled across the exhibit, went in and she bought me the signed book as a birthday present. After flipping through Japan I went online to look through his recent work to see what current exhibitions of his are showing. This led me to the Harris/Harvey gallery in Seattle. Browsing through the artists they represent I came across the painter Hart James. Now, I’ve dabbled in painting and to be honest I’ve never liked anything I’ve ever painted, but I enjoy the process and I enjoy looking at paintings. Her work stopped me cold, it’s magnificent. It has an organic fluidity that has eluded my own paintings that I want desperately to find.
See the more of her work at Harris/Harvey Gallery
A few days later I was in Portland Oregon visiting my sister Andrea Leda and made my way downtown to Powells Books. It’s a pilgrimage for any book lover. It can be overwhelming for it spans a city block, has multiple rooms, several stories and is packed with both new and used books. This time I went with a purpose. After talking with Matt about the art of the photo book and watching Alec’s videos, it had me thinking about how I used to collect them, but haven’t in years. A mix of ego, money, apathy maybe, who knows why I stopped but after looking through Kenna’s Japan that day I wanted to plop myself down in the photography book section of Powells and just browse. And so I did. For hours I pulled books down and consumed. Landscape yes, but others as well. Small folios of mid-century fashion, British portraits from Arnold Newman, anthologies from 50 years of shooting and a whole host of photographers I had never heard of before. It was wonderful and rich and engrossing and intimate.
There are a lot of photo books. But it did get me thinking that maybe this format is the new print. The photo book is not new, I know that. At the same time I feel the photographic print is becoming less something. Less collectible, valuable, sought after, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just reacting to my own inadequacy within the art world. But I think it may be more than this. There’s an estimated 3.2 billion photographs uploaded each and every day. Far more than could ever be printed or digested with any sense of intimacy. I chose a bizarre medium to participate in. It functions on multiple levels; advertising, documentation, social curation, artistic expression, and virtually everyone now has access to some sort of camera. Who wants a single physical print when innumerable images can be seen in a few digital clicks. For that matter, who wants to sit with an actual book. Well, I do.
Back home on the east side of the Cascade Mountains the August smoke had dissipated and in its place one morning was dense fog. A rarity in the high desert of central Oregon. Too rare to be ignored. Living in San Francisco for a decade one would think that I had enough of fog, but it feels comforting after a month of smoke and heat. I grab my photo bag and head to a local waterfall to work it for awhile. To focus on local landscape has always been tough for me. The energy and make do attitude of photographing while traveling is gone. When photographing locally I have this thought that I can always come back tomorrow when the clouds are different. But this dulls my creative sensibility, it dulls the sense of urgency and I don’t often come back the next day. I don’t like this feeling.
When I get home from the waterfall I see a link to a video in an email from my wife that says, "something fun to watch with your coffee in the AM, that also has some nice thoughts/philosophies/inspirational messages. Fun fact: This is the guy who I got your COFFEE shirt from”. She’s talking about a gray shirt she got me that has stenciled in black letters across the chest the word ‘coffee’. I get comments on it almost every time I wear it. One guy even yells at me when I’m not wearing it, “hey it’s the coffee guy". Smallish town living. I click on the link and the video is from Brendan Leonard and is titled Seven Summits of My Neighborhood. It’s a creative take on the famous seven summits expeditions that sees people trying to climb the tallest point on each continent. His take is to keep it local. He climbs the seven tallest peaks he can see from his home in Missoula Montana. Going solo or partnering with his mother, a friend or his wife he often bikes to the climb and either runs or hikes to each summit.
It calls to mind Alastair Humphreys of England who came up with a neat idea he calls micro adventures. A microadventure is an adventure that is close to home, cheap, simple, short, and yet very effective. Both of these guys have larger travels and projects that take them far away, but turning to what can be found in their own backyard is a reminder that adventure, that art, is where it’s found. In fact, Alastair was named National Geographic Adventurer of the year specifically because of it. To not use lack of travel as an excuse to not be adventurous, creative, entertained or curious. It’s an ethos I want to practice more because I live in the magnificent and unique geography of Bend Oregon and wilderness access is at my finger tips.
What’s at your fingertips?