SNAPIXEL
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Photo: Joseph O. Holmes
snapixelmag.com
in the magazine 08
single frames
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On the Town
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Check it out
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Pop Culture
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tech spot
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Haenyo Cityscape 100 Abandoned Houses
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AMNH
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Q&A: catherine edelman
a word from the editor
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lot has happened here at Snapixel since the previous issue. With two brand-new interns onboard (who we are totally excited about!) the team has been hard at work finding ways to bring you photography with an interesting twist. Photo: Youngna Park
Inspired by solitude, this issue of Snapixel examines silence amid a world of noise. Ranging from the Steve-Zissou-reminiscent piece, Haenyo, or as I like to call it, “Korean Lady Divers”, to the monotonous saturated cities photographed by Marcus Koppen, all of these works are very much about location – the way that the environment and surroundings effect the people contained within them. I could explain to you why each of these works screams “quiet” to me, but I’ll let you find those connections yourself. After all, photography is all about what you take away from the work – the photographers merely try to guide you towards ideas while letting you make the final interpretation. Where do you find silence? Alone in a huge city filled with people? In a quiet museum, silhouetted against the exhibits or deep down in the Ocean? Hopefully this issue will inspire you to find your own quiet space within which to contemplate just how awesome photography really is.
-Kaitlyn
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contributors
editor
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kaitlyn ellison content editor
Kelsey Frazier
marketing and advertising director EMily Sands art director adam oliver creative director
sarah marshall
staff writers
Kelsey Frazier, Alexander henson, Robin Lam, Emily Sands
contributing photographers
Ian baguskas, Kevin Bauman, jonathan harris, joseph o. holmes, Amel Kerkeni, Marcus Koppen, YoungNa Park, D. Yee cover photo by Marcus Koppen contents photo by D.Yee back cover photo by D. Yee
Photo: D-Yee
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Single frames
LOST IN CHINATOWN (NEW YORK) d. Yee www.d-yee.com
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SINGLE FrameS
SALMON HOLE (Chico, California) Youngna Park www.youngnapark.com www.20x200/com/artists/youngna-park.html
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SINGLE frameS
UNTITLED AMEL KERKeNI www.amelkerkeni.com
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on the town
NEW YORK Sasha wolf Gallery David Nadel: Burns february 3 - March 26 Photographer David Nadel’s series features the remains of burned down forests in Northwest Montana. The landscapes show a desolate snow covered land pierced by thousands of dark remains of trees. Mesmerizing in it’s scale, though the images aren’t really all that different from one another, it’s the repetition of the forest that makes the project interesting. For more information go to www.sashawolf.com
SEATTLE
Photo: Sam Comen, Jose on Capulin in Lost Hills, CA
Photo Center NW ACROSS THE DIVIDE - CRITICAL MASS 2010 March 3 - 25 With the goal of exposing emerging and mid-career photographers, Photolucida created a program in which 552 artists entered to show off their work to a jury of over 200 professionals in the photo world. The participants were narrowed down to 50, and juror Todd Hido selected one image per artist to represent their project. These 50 images are on display first at the Photo Center, NW, but will also show in Portland, and San Francisco. For more information, go to http://pcnw.org/
Photo: David Nadal, Burn #75
ATLANTA
Image: Alex Kvares
Beep Beep Gallery Greetings and Salutations March 5 - 27 Preview of Upcoming 2011 Exhibits, featuring artists Born, Steven Dixey, Mark Hosford, Alex Kvares, Louis N Lapierre, Kelly McKernan, Sam Parker, Sanithna Phansavanh, Matt Relkin, Andrea Sanders, Marcy Starz, Allen Taylor, and Elizabeth Weber. More info at www.beepbeepgallery.com
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DENVER
CHICAGO
Photo: Farm Equipment, c-print, 2009
Plus Gallery Patti Hallock: The West is here MArch 4 - April 9 Photographer Patti Hallock describes her new work The West is Here as “a place-less place, a myth, and the utopia we want to escape to. In searching for the West we begin to define ourselves.” More info at www.plusgallery.com
ROME
Photo: Steve Schapiro, Mirror 2, 1975. Courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago
Catherine Edelman Gallery Steve SCHAPIRO: TAXI DRIVEr/ THE GODFATHER March 11 - April 30 In his first solo show in Chicago photo journalist Steve Schapiro takes you behind the scenes of some of the greatest films ever made: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. More information at http://www.edelmangallery.com/
Photo: Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (14) courtesy of the Gagosian Gallery
GAGOSIAN GALLERY GREGORY CREWDSON: SANCTUARY FEBRUARY 3 - MARCH 5 If you just happen to be vacationing in Rome, you’re just in time to catch the tail end of the exhibit on Gregory Crewdson. Not there? The images can be seen online at www.gagosian.com
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Check it Out
The Whale Hunt
Check it Out
The Whale Hunt is an experiment in human storytelling. “In May 2007, I spent nine days living with a family of Inupiat Eskimos in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost settlement in the United States. The first several days were spent in the village of Barrow, exploring ramshackle structures, buying gear, and otherwise helping the whaling crew prepare for the hunt. We then traveled by snowmobile out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean, where we camped three miles from shore on thick pack ice, pitching our tents about ten feet from the open water. Boats were readied, harpoons prepared, whaling guns loaded, white tunics donned, a snow fence constructed, and then we sat silently in the -22 °F air, in constant daylight, waiting for whales to appear. A thousand-year-old tradition, the Inupiat whale hunt provides the community’s annual food supply, currently limited by international law to 22 whales a year. Each spring as the ocean thaws, ice breaks away from the mainland as a single massive chunk, which then floats out to sea, creating a canal of open water called the "lead". It is through this lead that Bowhead whales migrate north to the Arctic Circle, where they spend summers, surfacing for air every 30-45 minutes en route. We saw hundreds of whales on the horizon, but most were too far away to attack. Finally on the fourth day two whales (each 36 feet long and weighing around 40 tons) were harpooned, hauled up onto the ice using a block and tackle system that resembles a giant tug of war between man and sea, and summarily butchered, the meat and blubber then distributed to the Barrow community. I documented the entire experience with a plodding sequence of 3,214 photographs, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport, and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant “photographic heartbeat”. In moments of high adrenaline, this photographic heartbeat would quicken (to a maximum rate of 37 pictures in five minutes while the first whale was being cut up), mimicking the changing pace of my own heartbeat. The purpose of this project was threefold: First, to experiment with a new interface for human storytelling. The photographs are presented in a framework that tells the moment-to-moment story of the whale hunt. The full sequence of images is represented as a medical heartbeat graph along the bottom edge of the screen, its magnitude at each point indicating the photographic frequency (and thus the level
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of excitement) at that moment in time. A series of filters can be used to restrict this heartbeat timeline, isolating the many sub stories occurring within the larger narrative (the story of blood, the story of the captain, the story of the arctic ocean, etc.). Each viewer will experience the whale hunt narrative differently, and not necessarily in a linear fashion, constructing his or her own understanding of the experience.
to see things from a computer’s perspective. I was interested in reaching some degree of empathy with the computer, a constant thankless helper in my work.
Second, to subject myself to the same sort of incessant automated data collection process that I usually write computer programs to conduct (in previous projects like We Feel Fine, Lovelines, Universe, 10x10, and Phylotaxis). Much effort is spent making computers understand what it’s like to be human (through data mining and artificial intelligence), but rarely do humans try
I am grateful to Andrew Moore, a New York based friend and photographer who accompanied me on the trip, and to the Patkotak family of Barrow, Alaska, for their generosity in welcoming us into their house and later into their whaling camp. The Whale Hunt is really their story.
Third, to take an epic personal experience from the physical world and translate it optimally to the Internet, so that many people can share it.
- Jonathan Harris, October 2007 Too see the full project go to www.thewhalehunt.org
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pop culture ART
BOOKS
Film
Music
RETAI L
ROCK YOU IN A TATAMI ROOM Snapixel writer Kelsey Frazier interviews painter Yumiko Kayukawa before her show “Rock You In A Tatami Room” opens at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco, March 2011
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How did you first get your start painting? A: Painting and drawing has been my biggest passion since I was a little child. I was painting and drawing whole my life but I couldn’t find a chance to introduce my work to the public in Japan. When I was in my late 20s, one of my friends from the US suggested I try a gallery here. So I did and my painting career started.
Your paintings seem to incorporate a fusion of Western and Japanese cultures; is this something done intentionally or a natural result of your having lived significant portions of your life in both places? A: I can say it does happen intentionally and naturally. I grew up in a very small town in the countryside, which was isolated from any big city culture. But we have lots of American/Western culture surrounding our lives, especially through TV or movies. This is what I grew up with and it was my biggest “entertainment” and inspiration. Today Japanese ANIME is very popular internationally. In the 70’s we had a great variety of ANIME, I believe it was a golden age of Japanese animation. But I also enjoyed Disney and Tom & Jerry kind of stuff too. They were really different from the Japanese ones especially their soft movements and background orchestra music. The comedy style is really funny and I fell in love with it. As a teenager, I was into rock music and it made me dream about western culture more. At that time I started American comic book style painting. After I started traveling to the US, I could see what I had only imagined. It really opened up
my mind! I am not westernized, but uniquely mixed with both cultures. Since I have moved to the US, I can see the shape of Japan clearly from the outside, and I can see my roots deeply. Both cultures give me inspiration today.
Spurring from the previous question, any particular themes or ideas you intend to portray in your pieces? What exactly is it you hope to share with the world? A: Some paintings have themes or messages and some do not. I just pursue my idea and feeling at the time. Many times I don’t even know what is going to come out from my mind until I hold a pencil and start sketching. But one thing I always have in my painting is animals and creatures, which I really love more than anything. The theme and message are about how people and nature are affected by each other. It’s my love for animals to share their beauty in my painting.
One can’t help but notice the prevalence of female subjects in your paintings; are these subjects a representation of yourself? A: Many people say that my girls look like me, but they are not. They are just someone who has dark hair and eyes like me. They are symbols of my feelings.
What is your studio space like? What kind of atmosphere do you set up for yourself when creating new artwork?
A: It’s a small dining space next to the kitchen in an apartment. The space is very small but just big enough to put my desk, bookshelf, and computer. Since I grew up in Japan, I’m pretty good at organizing a small space. The desk is facing a big window and I can enjoy watching birds and squirrels hangout by some trees. I usually play music or listening to a Japanese TV/radio show on Youtube while I’m painting.
Where do you look for inspiration for your work? A: My inspiration comes from every direction. I love music and movies, good stories, or lyrics of a song are always inspiring. And anything that happens in my life or words people say. Politics, sports, martial arts etc... The world gives me ideas everyday. Rock and Roll has been a theme in a lot of your previous works and it seems to continue in your up-coming show at the Shooting Gallery, “Rock You in a Tatami Room”. What is it about Rock and Roll that keeps you coming back for more? A: I think Rock and roll is most beautiful thing ever invented and it’s a beautiful art. To enjoy a painting, you need to look at the piece, but music you can just play and feel it anywhere you are. I can enjoy this art while I’m making my artwork, and I feel such a connection to the music coming through my ear and into my painting hand. I mostly learned English from rock lyrics, and the title “Rock You in a Tatami Room” is a metaphor for my work and life in the US.
shows of the moment? A: I’m an old school one, so I love mostly 60 - 80’s stuff. From the Beatles to hair bands. My recent heavy listening bands are Alice Cooper and the Doors. Also Crazy Ken band from Japan. Movies, Rocky and The Godfather are always my favorites. Directors, I love Michael Mann, Paul Thomas Anderson, Guillermo Del Toro and The Coen brothers. I enjoy documentary films a lot, too. TV shows I watch are “Pit boss”,”Fatal attraction”, “What not to wear”, “Walking dead” etc....
When you’re not painting, how do you spend your time? Any other hobbies? Vices? A: One of my hobbies is crafting. I remake things such as T shirts or purses. I Love to hang out with my husband or friends at cafes, to enjoy some sweet stuff since I have a famous sweet tooth.My recent hobby is baking. I bake cakes or cookies at least once a week.
What’s next for you? Any new projects you’re working on? A: I’m a part of a group show at 323East gallery names “LYRIC”. Glenn Barr curates the show, and I’m working on a piece inspired from a song by Alice Cooper.
See more info about the artist and the show at www.shootinggallerysf.com/ events
Any favorite bands/musicians, movies, or television
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Tech Spot
By Alexander Henson 1 PHOTOJOJO TELEPHOTO LENS FOR IPHONE 4 The iPhone 4’s onboard camera is…well, it’s still a dinky little lens inside a telephone, but it’s pretty darn good. Augment the iPhone’s already prodigious photography prowess with Photojojo’s 8x telephoto lens. Complete with a custom case (to accommodate the lens’ extra girth) and tabletop tripod, the lens is a relative bargain at $35. Pair it with the Hipstamatic app and give Damon Winter a run for his money. Available now from photojojo.com
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21 JVC GC-PX1 HYBRID PHOTO/VIDEO CAMERA
2 3 CANON REBEL T3i (600D) Looking to continue their dominance in the entry level DSLR market, Canon unveiled the successor to the best-selling Rebel T2i. Unsurprisingly named, the new Canon Rebel T3i (or 600D) brings one major change from the previous generation: it borrows the 3” Vari-angle TFT display from its older brother, the more featurerich Canon 60D. Sensors and megapixel count remain unchanged from the previous T2i (22.3 x 14.9mm CMOS and 18.0MP, respectively), but why fix what ain’t broke? Coupled with the camera’s 1080p video recording capabilities, the swiveling lens will make recording HD video at odd angles a snap(ixel!) and figures to snag even more aspiring photo enthusiasts to invest in Canon. Available now, MSRP $899.99
The pandemic spread of highdefinition video has led to: A) Americans’ insatiable hunger for professional football television programming and B) an army of bleeding-edge photographers lamenting the lack of HD recording on their otherwise formidable DSLR outfits. The new JVC GC-PX1 won’t really solve either problem, but for the traveling photog who wants high quality photo and video in a compact (albeit bizarrely-shaped) package, it doesn’t get much better. The features list reads like alphanumeric soup: 1080p HD video at 60FPS (!), 10mp photos with full manual controls, 3” touchscreen LCD / control screen and 32GB onboard memory expandable up to 128GB. Available spring 2011 in Japan just north of $1200 USD, but expect a lower price when it comes stateside.
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FEATURES
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Haenyo PhotogRAPHY by Ian Baguskas words by Robin Lam When you think of deep-sea diving, the last thing you’d imagine would be a 60-yearold grandma, wrinkled and tanned, emerging from the waters in a tight wetsuit, weighted belts, and carrying a giant net of shellfish and sea urchin. Free diving up to 66 feet deep every day, these women, mostly 50 years and older, forage to support themselves, their families, and their communities through one of the most traditional Korean activities left in their largely modernized society. Alternately described as Korean mermaids, ajummas of the sea, and sea women, the Haenyo (pronounced hen-ya) are both a proud touchstone of Korean society as well as a rapidly disappearing relic of its past. Once the duty of men, diving for sea urchin, octopus, conch shells, abalone and other shellfish gradually transformed into a woman’s occupation because they were not subject to the heavy taxes imposed on men. This brought a distinct role reversal to the islands as women became the main breadwinners and men stayed home to take care of children. When photographer Ian Baguskas first came across the Haenyo he was inexplicably drawn to them partly because of the fading culture that they represent. “Part of the impetus that drew me [to the Haenyo] was the fact that they are the last of their kind,” he says. “They're part of a very small community and there are too many of them left, I would guess that not too long from now there might not be any of them except for maybe tourist places.” “Now the young, the children of the Haenyo, are going off to school and to do other things with their lives rather than go diving because you know, diving is really a difficult thing – not fun and not romantic and can be really difficult work. So most of the women that are diving now are over 50 years old and there doesn’t seem to be many young women doing that at all. So it’s this tradition that’s dying out and then yea, that’s sort of what interested me is the fact that they’re no longer… I mean once the divers that are there now are gone, who knows what’s gonna happen.” Baguskas describes the Haenyo as a quiet and reserved group steadfastly going about their daily routines, which involve physically demanding activities such as diving for over five hours a day in frigid waters, carrying huge loads of seafood onto the land, and spending another three or four hours scooping sea urchin meat out on the rocks. The language barrier between Baguskas and his subjects probably accounted for some of the reservation that held back the Haenyo, but overall Baguskas felt that they regarded him with more amusement than anything. “To get them to respond to me, I sort of just pestered them and tried to be nice and helpful. Sometimes I would offer to help them carry their bounty out of the water,
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which was absurdly heavy. It was like a 70-pound bag or sea urchins, spiky and heavy. I couldn’t believe that they were able to handle it. They looked frail and old but they were pretty tough. I found that in certain circumstances if I just sort of hung out long enough and persisted, that they sort of broke that serious exterior and you’d get some smiles and they’d sort of just laugh at me. I noticed that especially when I would go into the water trying to get up close to them they thought it was pretty funny.” But then there were times when even language barriers could be averted and just the pleasure of human companionship formed friendships between the photographer and the divers. “There was this one area that I would go where [the Haenyo] would be cleaning the sea urchins out, scooping the meat from the sea urchins on the rocks,” he describes. “I was there a couple days and there were some women that became very friendly and they would feed me sea urchin with their hands.” One of the most distinctive aspects of the Haenyo is the ‘Haenyo song,’ a signature sound of the women that is not really a song, but more like a series of whistles and voices, like grunting, Baguskas told me. “It wasn't rhythmical or melodic, it was some form of communication that they would have with each other, either letting each other know that they were there, or a way to sort of pass the time,” he muses. “I mean, they're too far away from each other to have a conversation or anything like that, so I guess these noises are a way to keep each other company. I mean, that's my guess. Or it could be like, 'Oh there's lots of sea urchin down here in this spot' or something.”
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According to other accounts, the Haenyo song is simply a result of the physical pressure of the women holding their breaths in deep water for long period of time, often up to three minutes. When the women finally come up for air, their expelled breath as they break through the ocean’s surface creates the high-pitched whistling sound of the ‘Haenyo song.’ Baguskas finds it hard to put in words what the impetus was that drew him to the Haenyo, but he admits that many of his projects revolve around the theme of finding and documenting parts of society that are disappearing and generally ignored. In a previous project, Sweet Water, Baguskas photographed landscapes in the West of homes and developments that attempted to create green utopias in natural deserts which eventually fell apart due to water restrictions and the unsustainability of their environments. In Haenyo, Baguskas focuses on the natural quality of the women’s occupation: “This way of life that they have is kind of agrarian and sort of goes back to when times were simpler,” he explains. “They're not using heavy machinery or boats, you know they're not polluting the waters or using nets to catch some sea life and then also catch other sea life and end up killing that other sea life. It's very sustainable and simple and in some ways it shows a way of life that we could still live and not have to, you know do all this other stuff that we're doing. I mean I know that we have a huge population to feed and whatever but I think it's good to show this kind of thing.” “A lot of the things I photograph have layers of meaning or complexity in them that I can’t even really put into words. Part of that is because I’m not so good with words or writing, so photos - visual representation – that’s the way I prefer to express myself. With Sweet Water and the Haenyo, there are environmental issues that I’d like people to see, not just the beautiful landscapes or images. There are a lot of issues at hand with everything that’s going on in the world and I’d love to be able to get that across [in my imagery].”
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CITYSCAPES
Photographers always have the most succinct way of describing their field. I remember sitting one morning with Bay Area photographer Janet Delaney in the corner of her second-story workspace, sifting through various online photo magazines when Ms. Delaney heaved a big sigh and said offhandedly, “The world is full of sad people taking sad photos.” Then she laughed and after a pause, tilted her head to one side and said,
“I guess that’s the way it is.”
Amman Dubai Hong Kong NYC Tokyo It is commonly thought that our passions and professions are restricted to completely separate spheres. For many of us, the potential combination of the two is a fantasy left to the far reaches of our imagination. However, there are the few that manage to turn this fantasy into a reality. Photographer Marcus Koppen is one of these few, having transformed his love of photography into a successful career that is both fruitful and fulfilling.
cities encountered throughout his travels, particularly the multitude of large-scale metropolises at large in Asia. One city in particular, Hong Kong, caught Koppen’s attention. “When I first visited Hong Kong a couple of years ago I was blown away by the clusters of buildings. They appeared very abstract and repetitive, not human at all”. This observation would serve as the inspiration for what would become his on-going project, “Cityscapes”.
Koppen’s introduction to photography occurred in his early 20’s, taking it up as a hobby on the side of his nine-to-five job. But, what began as a pastime soon became Koppen’s main focus. After quitting his day job he found himself committing to a three-year photography honors program at Southampton Institute of Art and Design from which he graduated in 2001. In 2003 he relocated to Amsterdam and embraced a career as a freelance photographer specializing in portraits, fashion and travel photography for the Dutch Print Media where he still works today. It was at the start of his time in Amsterdam that Koppen recognized his gravitation towards the wide variety of cultures and cities in the world, a realization that would manifest itself into the basis for his future work.
The Cityscape series is undeniably eye-catching. The portraits feature vast cityscapes captured either near dark or in complete darkness, an attribute that allows the vivid colors and lights of the city to come forth in full force. The series invites us to experience the cities from a perspective often ignored, one of silent stillness in contrast to the hustle and bustle of everyday life. While the series focuses mainly on the urban structures themselves, Koppen insists that it’s not about architecture. Rather the purpose is to embrace the urban city in itself as a place that shapes the lives of its inhabitants without them necessarily realizing it. As a result he finds himself most drawn to the energy that radiates from a city at night, a time when most of its inhabitants are asleep leaving the city to speak for itself. By capturing his photos after dark he allows one to see the cities from an angle that might otherwise be missed, opening the door to a new perspective.
Acquiring the position with Dutch Print Media not only provided Koppen with the resources necessary to launch his career as a freelance photographer, but also gave him the opportunity to travel the world. Originating from a small village in Germany, Koppen found himself drawn to the dynamic and ever-changing
Perhaps one of the most notable characteristics of Cityscapes, beyond the vibrant colors and eye-catching structures, is the significant lack of people in the
photographs. “I love the fact that you cannot see many people in my cityscapes. It gives a more abstract feel to the images. We know there are millions of people living in the cities, but the technique I use allows moving objects to disappear. It makes it easier for people to identify with the picture, everybody can claim it as their own world”. By stripping the city of its inhabitants a deepened sense of the potential isolation one can feel in such a gargantuan world emerges.
For Koppen, the Cityscape project is a platform for contemplation and interpretation. His intention is to lift the veil held firmly in place by the action of every day life, and in doing so expose the city behind it, the city in itself. The photos spark a fascination in his viewers who become acutely aware of the implications inherent in the structure of the urban jungle itself. From here Koppen invites the viewer to formulate their own vision of the cityscape and the affect it has on the lives of its inhabitants.
Logistically, Koppen is extremely thorough in the planning of each shot. He cites precision and patience as the keys to his success, “The actual shoot will take no longer than one hour, but planning and timing are important. Normally I’ll scout in the daytime to see what I can get at night. I constantly observe, making notes of the sun, time, and locations.” Travel-wise he keeps it light and simple, bringing with him a medium format camera, a couple of lenses, and a tripod. Admittedly some photos have required a certain amount of rogue activity, having previously snuck
Photography by Marcus Koppen Words by Emily Sands
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“For me, photography is not a job. It is my life, my passion.” onto balconies and rooftops in order to get the perfect shot. But these kinds of occurrences are the exception; more often than not he finds it easy to gain permission to shoot at his desired locales. In the end Koppen is at the mercy of the location to provide him with the shot he needs. He claims that getting the perfect shot is an organic and pure process that one must not take for granted. “I am on a real mission, on a hunt if you wish. It’s just the location and me. I can take the time to wait for the right moment or if necessary come back again and again. Nobody is around me. The process is pure and real”. In this way the Cityscapes project provides a welcome
alternative to the commercial photography Koppen is so often engaged in. He alludes to the fact that not everything in photography is enjoyable. Taking photos of people, whether it is portraiture or fashion, can be very constrained and stylized. There is always a crew around, and he often finds sets to be sterile – lacking the genuine and organic process he embraces in his personal work. He sees the Cityscape project as an unfinished and everlasting creative outlet, allowing him to follow his own path and make his own decisions.
locations around the world, Koppen also loves his life as a photographer for one pure and simple reason: unpredictability. Everyday is different and each photo shoot has its own story, predicaments, challenges and successes. The photography industry and styles are constantly advancing and heading in new directions, providing him the constant opportunity of innovation and metamorphosis. For this reason being a photographer is much more than a career for Koppen. He feels at home in photography, it’s his way of life.
Koppen admits that he can’t remember the last time he was bored. Besides being paid to take photographs at various
Check out more images from the Cityscape project as well as Koppens other work at www. marcuskoppen.com
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Abandoned Houses
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Images by Kevin Bauman Words by Kelsey Frazier In a world that holds progress in high regard some of the most striking occurrences are those that deny movement forward. Decaying instead of flourishing into something new seems to offend our sense of what it is to be a part of the world, at least the world that values the potential inherent in transformation. For photographer Kevin Bauman this phenomenon of atrophy has served as the basis of his work for over thirty years. Kevin Bauman got his start in photography as a mode of creative release after landing a stressful sales job straight out of college. An avid lover of ceramics he found himself without access to a ceramics studio after graduation. Craving a creative outlet he decided to take on photography, “I thought (somewhat mistakenly) that photography seemed pretty simple. All I needed was a camera.” This hobby quickly turned into a full time occupation. “In the late 90’s I met a photographer’s assistant in the local community college darkroom I frequented, and he was looking for a replacement as he was leaving the position. Fortunately I was looking for something new, and was interested in pursuing photography. After a couple of years I became the studio manager, and eventually the photographer began to pass along some work he didn’t want to take on.” However with the emergence of online media, the creation of royalty free stock and the growing presence of digital cameras the photography industry experienced significant change in the early 2000’s making it harder for many photographers to maintain their livelihood solely on their art. Bauman found himself struggling to find work in the editorial and commercial photography fields and thus decided to leave Michigan and explore other arenas. He soon found himself working as a web developer full time, first in Washington D.C. and then in Denver, Colorado where he remains today.
Kevin cites his parents as great influences over his photography and life in general. His father, the architect, and his mother, the painter, introduced attention to aesthetics into Kevin’s life from a young age. “My parents generally appreciated very clean and minimalist design and that definitely rubbed off on me. I’ve tended to gravitate towards simple straight forward photography both in my own work, and in the work I admire.” Some of his favorite photographers include Bernd and Hilla Becher, Edward Burtynsky, Michael Kenna, Stephen Shore, Richard Misrach, and Hiroshi Sugimoto to name a few. What’s apparent in this selection is Bauman’s affinity for the simplistic yet stunning aspects of black and white photography and a passion for bringing the extraordinary out of the seemingly ordinary. With his own work Bauman expands beyond black and white, bringing the same simple yet vivid attributes to color photography.
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Another impact on the development of his photography style came with the influx of digital cameras and the movement away from film that has taken over in recent years. “I still enjoy shooting film, but it gets more and more difficult to get good processing done, and good scans are still expensive and time consuming. Digital is quick and easy.” He does maintain a healthy level of nostalgia for film photography however, “The down side to digital is that it’s very predictable and you know exactly what you’ve got. That takes some of the surprise out of the process, and in the past that was part of the fun.” Bauman also enjoys experimenting with alternative forms of photography, shooting with a Diana or old Polaroid on occasion. In a world constantly striving to achieve the next best thing photographers continue return again and again to the classics to mix things up. In fact, one of the cameras Kevin uses on a regular basis is a forty or fifty year old Hasselblad 500c, which he uses primarily for personal work. On the other hand when it comes to commercial and editorial work he sticks to the industry standards, using Canon DSLRs to get the job done. Kevin’s focus has been and continues to be on the landscape. When asked what draws him to this particular type of photography he noted his experience in youth as the main influence. “I’ve always been into the outdoors and I suppose watching all of the fields and farm land around where I grew up turn into strip malls and subdivisions made me yearn for what I saw with less and less frequency”. However his notion of the landscape expands beyond the typical idyllic, expansive natural scenes so often associated with the genre. Kevin extends his definition to include photos of abandoned houses, churches and other post-industrial landscapes, believing them to be of the same realm as what one might consider the classic versions of landscape photography. Which brings us to his 100 Abandoned Houses project. Rewind to Bauman’s 36 years living in Metro Detroit. Once the bustling hub of the American automobile industry the photographer found himself in the midst of a drastically different city from the Detroit of its glory days. Hit hard by the gasoline crises of the 1970s and the latest economic crises felt throughout the country Detroit went from one of the most populated cities in the country, with close to 2 million people living within its borders, to only 900,000 in a matter of years. One major consequence was the emergence of drastic urban decay. Bauman had a front row view of the impact the decrease in population had on the city, “All parts of the city have abandoned houses. Many neighborhoods are almost completely abandoned, often times with only one or two occupied houses left, and sometimes with only one or two houses left standing. Other areas had nicely kept houses with abandoned ones interspersed. Some areas contain modest post-war housing, while other neighborhoods were at one time occupied by Detroit’s wealthiest citizens.” The city, once brimming with vitality appears to us now as a modern day ghost town, the echoes of which point to a lost era of American history. For Bauman, the decay of this once great city serves as rich subject matter for exploring the interaction between man and environment, another fundamental interest behind his work. The project started almost by accident. After acquiring his first camera Kevin took to the streets, wandering the streets of Detroit photographing anything and everything that caught his attention. Soon after initiating his venture into photography he noticed emerging patterns in what he was capturing. He found himself
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drawn to the deterioration that seemed to show itself around every corner. “I could not understand how an American city could every reach such dire state. Detroit had, at times, had been called, the “Arsenal of Democracy”, “The Motor City”, and “The Paris of the Midwest”. How could such a city find itself in such bad shape? I’ve photographed all parts of the city, good and bad, but the collection of photographs of abandoned houses grew fastest.” These structures once housed the lives of individuals and families. Now they remain as silent reminders of the past. Not only are they physical manifestations of decay, even more so their slow, silent deterioration is a window to the downfall of what was once a city of great pride and production in America. “Often times the city is quiet. When neighborhoods are largely devoid of inhabitants, the normal city noise fades away. It’s probably part of the reason I tended to photograph each house straight on, with not a lot of additional context or people. Sometimes the quiet was unsettling, as it’s really not something you’d expect in a city that once had a population close to two million.” The phrase “Silence speaks louder than words” seems eerily relevant. The series has gained a lot of acclaim in the media over the past few years, having been featured in the New York Times, SF Gate, and ABC World News in July 2010. Currently Kevin continues to photograph as often as possible while working his
web-developing job in Colorado. He states that the urban decay of 100 Abandoned Houses continues to hold a prominent place in his mind, but his more recent subjects include Mt. Evans, which he photographs regularly from his balcony, as well as a series on small churches in Detroit. “In Detroit it seems any structure can become a church, though recently many of those seem to be abandoned just like so much else in the city. They are often constructed in places that were never intended to be churches. Some are in old gas stations, some in old store fronts, some in former banks, and sometimes even in old garages”. Simple and straightforward in content Bauman’s photography calls the viewer to see things as they really are. “Simplicity is something I hope makes it’s way into most of my projects. From a sociological perspective, I’d like people to see what Detroit and its citizens have been through and the kinds of problems it faces. From a photography perspective, I hope viewers find an interesting and compelling set of images that, while they may represent something depressing, hopefully also show some beauty in the decay.”
To see more of Bauman’s work, go to www.kevinbauman.com.
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AMNH Joseph O. Holmes
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I first began the amnh series six years ago.At the time my passion was street photography which I found to be a wild mix of technical skill and social engineering, with every component changing and evolving second-by-second. I was hooked on it. But then for six weeks in the fall of 2005 I found myself shooting the amnh series, a project that spun my love of shooting strangers into a radically different environment, a sort of off-the-street photography. The project carried me from sunlight into museum darkness, from rapid-fire to a zen-like slow motion, and forced me to rethink the whole process of stalking people with a camera. Eventually I found that I would gradually enter a state of heightened sensitivity each time I arrived to shoot more images, a mental zone where I became extremely focused on the movement people around me. Hours would pass by like minutes, and each visit was like a meditation session. When I returned to the American Museum of Natural History in 2008 to create a second series of amnh silhouettes I didn't anticipate how much things would have changed. Most visitors no longer lingered in front of the dioramas, satisfied instead with a quick digital photo or video, barely glancing up from their LCD screens. The days when visitors stopped to contemplate the dioramas have disappeared, taking along with them my zen-like state of focus.
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Q&A
The Chicago Project
KAITLYN ELLISON INTERVIEWS CATHERINE EDELMAN, of the EPonymous Chicago Gallery The owner and founder of the eponymous Catherine Edelman gallery was kind enough to sit down over the phone and talk to me about the projects that make her gallery so compelling
What originally drew me to want to feature Edelman was The Chicago Project, an online gallery representing artists from all over Chicago, featuring those whose works have not yet been revealed to the public en-mass (a personal goal of Snapixel as well). But in addition to this project the gallery also funds a series of other educational and you could say, charitable, projects that are all about furthering knowledge of contemporary photography. THE CHICAGO PROJECT The Chicago Project was “born out of a conversation with an assistant at the time,” around 2002. When Edelman realized that her gallery wasn’t really representing photographers in Chicago, she decided to create an offshoot of the gallery to promote the work of underrepresented artists in Chicago-land. The Chicago Project is an online gallery with an open call to photographers, as long as Edelman thinks they’ve got talent or potential, they’re in. Originally launching with 9 or 10 artists, the project has grown to represent over 40 unique artists and continues to gain popularity. According to Edelman, her clients love it because it’s all about “young artists who may or may not blossom, but everyone enjoys watching the process of watching them grow.” ARTIST TALK The Chicago Project is not the only unique program that Edelman features in her gallery. There’s also her personal favorite, “Artist Talk.” In this program, the artists featured in the gallery present their artwork on video – each and every piece. Edelman
considers artists to be their own best proponents, and what better way to have them promote their work than to tell everyone all about it? The footage features the artists as the star of their own video, leading the audience around to every piece in their collection. This gives viewers the more intimate opportunity to hear what the overall collection represents and what each of the individual pieces mean directly from their creator. Ctrl+P:PHOTOGRAPHY TAKEN OFFLINE The gallery’s latest project has been taken on by the Assistant Director, Juli Lowe, and Gallery Manager, Trevor Power of Edelman’s gallery. “I wanted to give something that was theirs, because they work really hard, but in the end I make all of the decisions”. Despite being another web-based project, this time around it’s about taking photography off of the web and into the real world. Says Trevor Power, “A big part of what Juli and I do at CEG is to follow blogs and online photography magzines to stay abreast of the work that is being created. There have been times when we felt underwhelmed with always looking at work backlit by a computer screen, with emails and other distractions keeping us from fully investing ourselves in the work we were viewing.” So the two deicded to bring images from the blogs they had been so often vieweing - into the gallery. the first artist was Adam Panczuk, and the second - an exhibit openin on March 11, is named Matt Eich.
Edelman is all about creating a dialogue with the public – she doesn’t want to talk at them, she wants to talk with them. It’s a creative approach to the gallery business that borders on nonprofitry (the gallery is for-profit, of course). To see more of the Edelman Gallery and associated projects, go to www.edelmangallery.com
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