Built to Weather

Terry Kidwell 1982 photo by Tom Sims Since I started this project many months ago as evolution happened so did the unexpected reality of change. My original concept was a thought without a name, just snowboard related photography in a group setting.

The first things that came to mind were influences early in my photography realm; for sure Bud Fawcett’s inspiration and early work in the sport.

Another was a photograph of Terry Kidwell that hung on my wall ripped out of the pages of a early snowboard publication circa 1983. It was a pic of Kidwell at Soda springs flying off Wine Rock photographed

by the legendary pioneer in the sport– Tom Sims.

Then came the changes.

In September while I was in the process of building this show and possibly having him involved at some level, Tom unfortunately passed away. Weeks prior to this he happily agreed to have this image printed for the show.

Not only has his photograph inspired so many but also his ground-breaking freestyle snowboard design changed the sport without a doubt; this image of Terry had and still has to me so much mystic for the time period especially since snowboarding was in it’s infancy and being a skater I was visually stoked but hadn’t really tried it yet. He was flying into the wild yonder– a open winter landscape on a toy that many skiers and ski resorts had yet to understand.

curator

Built to Weather Jan. 14- Feb. 8, 2013 the Holland Project Gallery www.hollandreno.org

Cardiel at Donner Summit 1993

photo by Chris Carnel

John Cardiel, from Grass Valley, was influencing and inventing snowboarding in the freestyle realm before he switched gears and became a legend in the skating world. This was shot near ASI in the early 90’s while he was riding for and testing out a one-off handmade Trench coat by the late “Cottage industry” style 916 Clothing out of Northern California. The jacket weighed a ton but really made the photo.

Such a Faux pas. A weird day to be shooting in the snow. Travis Yamada at Mt. Rose, NV circa 1994. For that time period it was about mandatory sun, blue skies and mostly smiling models making turns– accepted as legit, primarily in the skiing world.

Socked in with low light, I used a Nikon camera body pushing color high speed Kodachrome film.

It was the day I realized it was about something else:

aesthetics

Travis Yamada

photo by Chris Carnel

Mike

Yoshida

is

“an artist living his subject matter, quickly understanding the meaning of a situation as a documentary photographer.”

-Jesse Burtner Quite the unique angle. A perfect image in so many ways.

Eero Niemala Whistler backcountry & shadow photo by mike yoshida

Road, Valdez AK 2002 Photo by Paul Laca

Paul Laca is originally from the Reno-Tahoe area. He moved to AK a decade ago and does some guiding and fishes commercially with his boat in the summer. Photos seem to find him when he’s out in the wilderness of Alaska.

Richard Leversee climbed with and documented Jim Zellers riding Half Dome in 2001.

Zellers, early mountaineer in the world of snowboarding, was documented by Leversee as the first and only person to snowboard the 45 degree cable-route side of Yosemite’s Half Dome. In 2001, after five years of “on-call” postwinter storm attempts, Zellers and Leversee hiked through the night to arrive in perfect conditions to climb and freeride down Half Dome unassisted.

Leversee and Zellers Post Half Dome ride. Ice axes and crampons, (not pictured) Splitboards and early 80’s Subaru, tools of the trade.

Richard is now a body healer, as Jim calls him, and told me over the phone as I tried to find these almost forgotten images.

“Sorry but Jim has a lot of those slides and I’m fine if you have a interest in using them. Photography isn’t a part of my life much anymore I don’t need to promote myself.”

I was amazed.

Such a accomplishment to document the only unassisted Half Dome descent on a snowboard ever. In the world of everyone having a camera at their fingertips– digital and whatever– I found it most fascinating Leversee’s perspective was beyond that and made it quite the project to track these images down.

I spent months locating the images, first by photographer Richard Leversee then via Zellers, of whom I’ve known for years, who was off the grid sea kayaking in Baja, Mexico. When I finally went to Jim’s house to grab the images they were original transparencies out of slide trays buried in a closet. He remarked,

“Wow, just like the old days, where you got to go to a climber’s house to get his images, quite the contrast from a image delivery via email, huh?.”

Ian Ruhter grew up in South Tahoe and became a sponsored pro snowboarder in the early 90’s. He then became fascinated with photography.

His style was doing highly experimental commercial and editorial projects within snowboarding.

He then decided to take a different route with his photography p r o c e s s .

Andreas Wiig Photo by Ian Ruhter “In the world of digital capture I’d be shooting 300 images and narrowing it down to a few. But in this world I’m working with 19th century technology wet plates and a huge camera.

Sometimes it takes 5 hours to get one shot, and it’s the original; there’s only one.

It’s unique, it’s working slow. I like it that way.”

Peter Line Photo by Ian Ruhter

Mike Basich has a film about his life called Open Space.

He started out shooting self-portraits with a Nikon F-5 film camera then went to a digital SLR. Now, he is exclusive with the Go-Pro p.o.v. cameras and does a lot of ground breaking (R&D) things with them.

Helicopter drop,Shaub in Haines, AK 2002 Long-distance (untested) radio triggered self-portrait by mike Basich

Niko Cioffi sets the night on fire in Helsinki, Finland 2011 photo by Tim Peare Tim Peare was in a rap group in the late-90’s and being from New Hampshire was inspired by Standard’s TB-7 film to come to Tahoe and leave that life behind.

“Photography is my juice now.”

Bud Fawcett is a first generation photographer of snowboarding who resided in Lake Tahoe in the mid-80’s. He has captured the early moments, roots and soul of the sport.

Shaun Palmer 1985 Everyone back then called him Minishred!

Photo Bud Fawcett

The late when

Craig asked

Kelly

once why

said he

in

a interview snowboarded:

“Cause it’s fun it makes me happy. Then he paused. But I only snowboard if I know it is going to make me happy.”

That just nails it.