01. Here we were and it was winter. We went on the Ferris wheel, me and the baby. It was only $10 to see the entire Niagara Falls, from the point of view of an angel, three times in a row.
02. After we checked in, the baby had a nap. I thought about people in other rooms, waiting, like me. Or not waiting. I knew I wasn’t alone even though it felt that way.
03. I fell asleep in the big bed. It wasn’t even night but I closed the blinds and turned all the lights on to make it seem as if it was. I wanted to divide my day – the Ferris wheel and after the Ferris wheel – before he showed up. My dreams were short, unfinished like the color yellow in the rain, some sort of foggy ghosts.
04. He watched me put lipstick on. He said he liked my girl hat. Only girls know how to make that hat out of a towel, that’s why I call it “the girl hat,” he said.
Continue Reading Niagara falls »
Recently RootSpeak spoke with Mike Burdon, the Englishman behind the brilliant infrared images being generated at Red Circle Photography.
RS: There seems to be a great deal of preparation involved with each of your shots. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and your process?
MB: I have been living and working in Spain for the last five years after moving from my home town in England. I have been working in photography and skydiving ever since this move. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity and time to travel after finishing my university career. Travel proved to be the catalyst for my creative side as this exposed me to amazing sights, lifestyles and cultures. It as from here that I started to learn photography and to learn how to skydive, which have resulted in being important parts of my life. Throughout my skydiving years I have been a part of projects, both personal and commercial which has given me a huge understanding of planning and preparation. It is these qualities which allow me to organize and produce the desired results.
RS: With skydiving being an obvious passion of yours, how do you go about capturing such pristine moments in what is ultimately a constantly moving, adrenaline-laden environment?
MB: Skydiving is an extreme sport in which one can generate some amazing photographs of beauty, athleticism and exhilaration. In order to capture these moments you obviously need to be proficient at the sport before you can start to carry cameras. The better that you fly your body the greater the range for taking photographs. Skydiving consists of many different disciplines, varying angles of flying, different types of formation, changing air speeds and it requires different skill sets for each of these areas. You can capture opportunistic frames as you can in ever other field of photography, however with skydiving the best frames are the product of good planning and good execution. Often training jumps are required if you are looking for a specific shot. It is far easier taking shots of skydivers that you have jumped with before because you can predict and anticipate their flying characteristics. This is important when dealing with speeds up to 200mph.
RS: There is certainly an ethereal quality to your work, and your photos of various wildlife do justice to their majesty in vivid detail. Where were these animals’ pictures taken? And did you know at the time that the post-production would ultimately create such a surreal look for their peripheral environment?
MB: My work with wildlife and the use of infrared has produced some interesting and worthwhile photographs. I am really happy with the results and will continue to photograph many more subjects. The use of infrared photography is usually contained to landscape photography. If you scan the internet then these are the type of images that you will find. However I have found the application of infrared in other areas to be far more rewarding. I want to capture shots that are ethereal and have an air of mystique to them. The photographs have been taken in various locations and countries around the world. The pictures of the elephants and game wildlife were taken on a recent trip to Africa. I knew that I would be pleased with the outcome because all the settings for the camera were done in advance, there is no actual post production work done on these photographs. In-camera ‘Photoshop’ techniques are a valuable asset to the digital photographers arsenal.
RS: What dream locations or subjects would you most like to shoot in 2011?
MB: An area in which I would like to do more work is within sport fashion. Skateboarding has a great appeal for me for taking photographs due to the nature of the sport, the interesting and varying personalities, the age and gender equalities and the diverse clothing which is available. I also love the environment that skate utilises. Skaters often have to use derelict or commercially disused areas because the funding for skate parks is not a high priority for government spending. These provide an interesting backdrop for photographs and highlight the passion these participants have for their sport.
RS: What defines a great photo to you?
MB: Every photographer and every spectator of photography have their own opinions of what makes a good frame. For me there are several factors in which I judge my photographs and other photographers work. Firstly, Do I like it? If the answer is no then I want to figure out what it is about the frame that I do not agree with, from this comes valuable lessons and feedback. If the answer is yes, then I want to identify and define what is is that I like about it. Again these reasons can inspire and develop you as a photographer. The truly great photographs are the ones which provoke a cognitive itch, something that needs scratching hours after seeing the image. These shots are remembered and hopefully generate other people to try something that may surpass the original.
I took up writing so that I would paint more. I figure that if I write about my process, it might give me some external accountability. Even though, at this middle stage of my life, I have an intense urge to paint, I still need someone waiting for it on the other side. Otherwise, it’s like that tree falling in the forest all by itself.
When I was in art school, people looked at and talked about each others’ work all the time. I also had the experience of living in a community of artists. At some point, I got ambitious in other directions that pulled me further away from environments which validated the importance of making art. I don’t regret these paths, but I’m feeling drawn back to a place, this familiar place, where I started and realize that I have much unfinished business.
I know I’m not the only one. I have artist friends that I keep in touch with. Our conversations are laced with apologies for not being in better contact and we lament the distractions of life that keep us from our studios. I truly wonder what percentage of art school graduates still paint or sculpt, or whatever, five years or more outside of graduation. Without support from like-minded people, the drive and the will to make art can simply wither away.
In addition to the general challenges of daily life (like, say, making a living), a tremendous obstacle to making art on a consistent basis is just having a space to do it in. From college on, I chose my living spaces around the availability of studio space. In Baltimore, I had a loft with twenty foot ceilings. In the suburbs, I converted a second bedroom into a studio. That bedroom transitioned to a nursery. During that period of my life, in addition to being a new mom, I invested whatever energy I had left into building a business. Somehow, I am surprised to look back now and realize that for about seven or eight years, I did not have a studio. It was always something that I was going to get back around to.
That thought haunts me now. When was I finally going to get around to it? I can’t say that I regret the choices I made over the past ten years or so. The success of my business allowed me to buy the house I am in now. The work I have been so immersed in feeds me subject matter for my paintings. I eventually came to the realization that if I don’t commit to spending time in the studio, I never am going to get around to it.
My brick bay front Victorian row house has a small third bedroom that became the repository for art supplies, easels, and portfolios stuffed with twenty years worth of drawings. Somehow, amidst the chaos of a room too small for its contents, I managed to create enough order to get into a bit of a routine in the studio. Like starting a new exercise program, I clumsily struggled through the re-entry phase. At first, it was very much about seeing if I could even still draw. I drew corners of my studio. I drew shells and bones. I drew cups. I drew shoes. I drew myself. Just like getting back to the gym, there came a point where I began to feel less rusty and more confident about exploring different directions.
In the Spring/Summer of 2009, I participated in a very popular, ridiculously large unjuried group show. Each artist who pays the entry fee and applies by the deadline gets an eight by eight foot wall space. I painted my wall flat black and hung three fourteen by eighteen inch watercolors. Feedback from the show was fantastic. I sold two of the three, and also received commission inquiries.
The scale of my crowded tiny studio was affecting the scale of the work I was making. In order to progress, I needed space to spread out. Over a year ago, I claimed the north facing master bedroom as my studio. It just seemed so much more important to have room to make art than to use that space for a bedroom. I figure that some people devote entire rooms to their televisions.
In the documentary about his life, art collector Alan Stone described visiting artists’ studios as entering spiritual space. My studio is indeed a haven; a place for reflection and immersion. Not everybody needs a studio to be creative, but I’ve come to believe that it is important to my commitment to being an artist.
Circling back around to the beginning of this train of thought, I’m going to see what it is like to try to tell about how things happen in the studio. I don’t look at any one thing that I make as an entity unto itself, but as an unfolding process of evolution. I’ll seriously try to not turn this into a navel gazing fest.
When Denver, Colorado began to come into its own as a hub for independent artistry in late 2001, the city was amidst a sort of identity crisis as it transitioned from the mountain-west themes of its past to subjects more aligned with an emerging urban playground at altitude. As the decade progressed, Denver found itself often times the least likely candidate to offer sanctuary to a plethora of expressionists, many of whom were early adopters of new and subversive methods in their pursuit of broad artistic and social commentary.
Frank Kwiatkowski came of age during this period and those who recognize the city’s perpendicular neighborhood streets have at one point or another most likely seen his version of the underground ethos made iconic by the likes of Shepard Fairey and others. Make no mistake though, Kwiatkowski is no borrower. The artist’s themes are provocative, as is his method of etching street cones – much in the same vain of a linoleum reduction process – and it has many buzzing with stories of his meticulous handy-work.
Continue Reading The Kwiatkowski Press »
I always had this fear that I will one day come across a dead body. This fear would usually manifest while outside of the city. It would come on particularly strong around bodies (!) of water. My fear wasn’t a fear entirely – there was a hint of excitement there. Sometimes, I’d look especially closely where there were any rock piles, nooks, thick bushes. A foot. A hand. A head. I could almost see them. It’s not that I wanted to come across a dead body… but I maybe I did.
I read a lot of true-crime books when I was younger. Even as a child, I used to sneak into my grandmother’s room and read her issues of Detektyw (detective) – this was a Polish magazine that specialized in features about crime, usually homicides. The writers didn’t skim on details. In those stories people would come across barrels full of body parts, baby corpses in the closet, fresh graves, torsos in the trunk the way you and I would sometimes get caught in the rain: not every day, of course, but eventually. So I guess in the back of my mind I always thought that it was perfectly feasible to go to a beach and stumble upon a femur, for example.
Continue Reading Blow Up »
The places you find depend almost entirely on the people you find them with. Which is why it was reprehensible of me to be driving around Youngstown with my ex boyfriend on a cold windy day. I knew if I went with him, I would find something good. Wanna find the dead? Bring something dying with you. Nothing more corpse-like in this entire state than the zombie relationship we’ve been pumping antibiotics into for the last 8 years, so sure that eventually science will catch up and find us a cure. I know the way this bait works – I used the decaying scent of our guilty whispers, hushed anger, veiled flirting to lure the buzzards, and once I saw the buzzards, I saw the broken driveway which led us into the asphalt heart of the City of the Dead.
Continue Reading City of the Dead »
Courtney Buckland isn’t exactly shy, nor particularly self-conscious. She is however, made slightly anxious by the recent adornment thrust upon her work.
Numerous times throughout our interview, she pauses to clarify and expand upon her words, her airy laugh a consistent forebearer leading to colored tangents surrounding her latest three-part series, an ode to disposable notions, feelings, possessions and even canvas forms themselves.
The Breckenridge-soaked transplant’s dialect embeds itself between the vernacular roots of greater metropolises. New York and Chicago stay on her lips as she harkens to her early upbringing and family’s influence; her mother a ballet teacher and her father an eclectic marketing consultant having given her the map but not the destination of a family’s inclination toward self-expression. Between adages of her latest trifecta “Cheap Sex and Cardboard,” “How Much for your Ass” and “Trapped in Your Pretty Little Head,” she digresses into sentimental chapters of her upbringing’s travels, always navigating back to the specific questions and subjects at hand.
Continue Reading Courtney Buckland’s Cardboard Culture »
The Navajo Nation is a 26,000-square-mile American Indian reservation in Arizona and New Mexico that contains an estimated 160,000 stray dogs and cats. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 180,000 residents on the Navajo Nation. Proportionally, there is one homeless dog for almost every resident and at least six stray dogs for every square mile. The inability to pay for veterinary services has lead to this overpopulation problem, as 43 percent of Navajo people live below the poverty level, the per capita income is just above $7,000, and the unemployment rate is 42 percent.
There are differing opinions regarding the dog’s role in the Navajo culture. Some believe the dog is considered sacred, “a spiritual people” that should be respected, not feared and pushed aside. Others feel Navajo tradition is that the role of the dog is to guard the home and herd the sheep, not to be kept as pets. According to the Navajo creation story, when the dog was in question the holy people asked, “What are we going to do with this animal, should we do away with this animal?” The dog replied, “No, I will be forever the watchdog, my place will be at the door.”
Continue Reading More Dogs than Bones »
On May 5, some 140 representatives of the municipalities of Nebaj, Chajul, Cotzal, Cunén, and Sacapulas, of Guatemala’s El Quiché department, submitted to the Congress, the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman a series of memoriales, or community declarations, denouncing the development—without prior information or consultation of the affected populations—of some fifteen mining operations, an equal number of hydroelectric plants, and one petroleum grant over the mountains and rivers that give life to their communities. Cunén, for its part, presented for a second time the results of a historic referendum held in October of 2009 in which nearly 19,000 residents of 72 towns and villages voted against the installation of megaprojects in the municipality. The memoriales came as the result of months of organizing, on the part of the affected populations themselves – at the community, inter-community, and regional level – with each progressive step of the organizational effort carried back down the chain to the consultation of each individual community involved.
Continue Reading Las Comunidades Toman la Palabra »
