Jerry Burchfield

I would be remiss if I didn't include a post about the late Jerry Burchfield here on 52 Photographers. I can only think of two or three other people who have had such a strong and lasting influence on me as an artist.

I first discovered Burchfield in 2005. I was researching presenters for the National Conference of the Society for Photographic Education held in Portland, Oregon. I was in the middle of completing my BFA project, which dealt with public parks. One of the lectures given was about the transformation of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which closed in 1999, into a park and residential use. Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain and four other photographers embarked on the Legacy Project (you can see the project's website here), photographing and documenting the transformation of the land from air field to public park. My research led me Burchfield's lumen prints, a term he coined. Before then, I (along with the vast majority of the photographic community) was oblivious to the existence of such a thing as a lumen print. At least, as known by that name. The lumen print, which is really a variation of the photogram, has it's roots in the photogenic drawings William Henry Fox Talbot did in the mid-1830's. Anna Atkins followed in Talbot's footsteps, publishing her book Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, which is considered to be the first book illustrated by photographs. Then the photogram process (though still not known by that term) became popular in Europe in a post-World War 1 art movement. First Christian Schad, a German, experimented with the process, humbly (note the sarcasm) naming his works Schadographs, then Man Ray made similar images, and named his works Rayographs. Then the Hungarian Laszlo Moholy-Nagy produced his own work, and named the process the Photogram, which is still in use today. 

For over 7 years, Burchfield traveled to the Amazon to make his lumen prints on-site, on the deck of a boat. His aim was to "create images that are free of inherent bias and commentary while still expressing ecological concerns by drawing attention to the beauty of the place."

I was stunned at the beauty of Burchfield's images, and even further stunned when I learned how simple the lumen process is, and that the different colors came from black and white photographic materials!

I learned only a few years ago that Burchfield passed away in 2009 from colon cancer, but his legacy still lives on, and his influence on my work is still greatly felt today.

Richard Long

Richard Long has been a strong influence on me as a photographer for about ten years now. His work appeals to me on several levels, among them, the hiker inside me. My favorite pieces of his are any of the lines made by walking. In making these sculptures by walking, he is "echoing the whole history of mankind." Rebecca Solnit devotes some of her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, a book I highly recommend, to Richard Long's art.

A Line Made By Walking, England 1967

England 1968

His work is as much performance art as it is anything else. Similarly to Andy Goldsworthy, his work lives in the ephemeral, and were it not for a photographic record, or in other instances, text works, there would be no evidence of Long ever having made his sculpture. 

Leaving the Stones, A Five Day Walk With Dogs on Spitzbergen, Svalbard Norway 1995

Pujet Sound Mud Circle, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle 1997

Visit Richard's website to view more work. 

Carol Panaro-Smith & James Hajicek

I've long been an admirer of and influenced by the work of collaborative duo James Hajicek and Carol Panaro-Smith. I discovered their photogenic drawing work around 2004-2005 when I was really getting into making Lumen prints.

Their work hearkens back to, and indeed is directly born from William Henry Fox Talbot, the originator of photogenic drawings, the experiments for which began in 1834. He discovered that paper coated with a salt solution, then brushed with silver nitrate turned black when exposed to light, and a final coat of salt halted that darkening. He then made what is essentially a photogram, placing botanical specimens on the sensitized paper, and exposing it to sunlight. Thus, the "photogenic drawing," and one of the first successful photographic processes was born.

Today, James and Carol use variations of Talbot’s early formulas, and create beautiful pieces that are layered, possess depth, and have fantastic textures. I remember being stunned at the colors and textures the first time I saw their work, and those same feelings return each time I look at their work.

Earth Vegetation 08/17

Their compositions are so simple and organic, as if they clamped the plants between the glass and paper right where the plants grew out of the dirt.

Earth Vegetation 06/01

A paragraph, and specifically the last half of it, of their artist statement for their latest body of work, Arc of Departure, resonates in me, and describes the experience of making this sort of work so much better than I’ve been able to in the past:

“The work evolved in stages from its initial intellectual underpinnings through a focus on the physicality of the remaining organic artifact to the spirituality of experiencing “the awe” of being in the immediate presence of this sacred transformative act - magic in its very essence, ruled by serendipity, elusive mysteries, fugitive images, and the ruling master of all – the ultimate impermanence of everything.”

Arc of Departure 09/09

Be sure to visit their website, and you can read an article about their work on Lenscratch. It’s well worth it to spend some time with their work, which can be seen at the Joseph Bellows Gallery, the photo-eye Gallery, and the Tilt Gallery.

Carleton Watkins

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829 - 1916)
El Capitan, 3600 ft., Yo Semite, negative 1861; print about 1866, Albumen silver print
39.1 × 51.3 cm (15 3/8 × 20 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829 - 1916)
View from Camp Grove down the Valley - Yo Semite, 1861, Albumen silver print
39.1 × 52.5 cm (15 3/8 × 20 11/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

[Stream with trees and mountains in background, Yosemite Valley, Calif.]

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829 - 1916)
[The Devil's Slide, Utah], 1873 - 1874, Albumen silver print
52.1 × 39.1 cm (20 1/2 × 15 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

https://www.carletonwatkins.org/

Seung Hoon Park

I really love the work of Korean photographer Seung Hoon Park (or Park Seung Hoon).

Montmartre 1 (Textus #252)

Park works with an 8x10 camera, and 8mm and 16mm film strips. He makes two exposures, then weaves the strips of film together. I love the discontinuous and misaligned nature of his pieces.

Textus #053-1

You can check out more of his work and read more about his process by following one of the links below:

https://susanspiritusgallery.com/artist/seung-hoon-park/

https://www.artsy.net/artist/park-seung-hoon

https://theartling.com/en/artists/seung-hoon-park/

http://www.lifestyleasia.com/413789/moment-photographer-seung-hoon-park/

Eadweard Muybridge

After last month's post on Timothy O'Sullivan, I thought it might be fun to make that a pattern, and talk about some of my influences each month.

Eadweard Muybridge didn't immediately become one of my influences. I think in my History of Photography class we mainly discussed his motion studies and experimentation. But I could be wrong; I was in Seattle for half of that semester while I was prepared to donate bone marrow to my brother who was undergoing treatment for Leukemia. It wasn't until about three years after that class that I really began paying attention to his landscape work he did in Yosemite.

Today, Muybridge is most known for his motion studies, which began with him being hired to settle a bet between two men, one of whom was Leland Stanford. The bet was whether a horse, when galloping had all four hooves off the ground, or if an animal that size was always in contact with the ground. Muybridge was hired, and devised a system of 12 cameras set at intervals along a race track, which was all in white. A trip wire was attached to each camera so that when the horse passed in front of it, the shutter was tripped and the exposure was made. This was in the days of wet plate collodion, when exposures were seconds long, so it really is remarkable for Muybridge to have figured out how to reduce the exposure time enough to stop motion the way he did. This led him to perform many more studies of animals and humans in motion. These studies ultimately led to the invention of the motion picture.

Though most known for the motion studies, Muybridge started out his professional photographic career as a landscape and architectural photographer. He photographed San Francisco, and surrounding areas including Yosemite. Some of the scenes he photographed in Yosemite were made from the same point as photographs made by his contemporary and competitor, Carleton Watkins.

For an excellent biography on Muybridge, read Rebecca Solnit's book River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West

Or if you don't want to buy a book, you can read this excellent bio over at Imaging-Resource.

Or you can just check out the Wikipedia article on Muybridge. 

Timothy O'Sullivan

This week, I thought I'd dig back into photography's past and look at one of my all time favorite photographers. Ansel Adams was my first influence as a photographer, but he was soon supplanted by Timothy O'Sullivan, Matthew Brady, Edward Muybridge, Carleton Watkins, and others (now that I've chosen to do a post on O'Sullivan, I'll likely do posts on the other afore mentioned photographers). I still remember thumbing through my History of Photography text book back in college at the beginning of the semester, and seeing the photograph below and thinking something along the lines of “Ah, an Ansel Adams photograph” and then looking at the caption and learning that it was actually made by O’Sullivan.

After that, I dug a little deeper into O’Sullivan’s work. I don’t really remember my initial impressions, or how soon afterwards he became one of my favorite photographers. And I’m not really sure there is a photograph of his that I would call my favorite. I think what impressed me first about O’Sullivan, and the other 19th Century landscape photographers was the incredible effort that was put into making their photographs. I loved imagining myself alongside them, a portable darkroom pulled behind a horse with hundreds of pounds of glass plates, hoping they don’t break along the journey, rushing to make an exposure before the collodion dried.

O'Sullivan started his photographic career as a Civil War photographer, apprenticed under Matthew Brady, then after the war worked as the photographer for several Survey Expeditions in the West. 

I’ve always found the choices O’Sullivan made to be intriguing. He never made the obvious choice when making his compositions, even when working during the Civil War. He had a sensitivity to the landscape that I still envy.

You can read more about O'Sullivan and view more of his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's website.