Brooks Dierdorff

Catherine Opie

2012-01-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

Catherine Opie gave a lecture at the U of O about her work this past week. It just happened to coincide with my show at Ditch Projects and she was nice enough to let me drive her out to see it. She was nothing but personable and kind and I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to talk with her about my work.

If you want to see some of Catherine Opie's work click here.

Thanks to Robert Beam for taking this photo.

A few images from my show at Ditch Projects

2012-01-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

Ditch Show Install Photos

2012-01-17T01:45:00.000-08:00

Show at Ditch Projects

2011-12-16T20:57:00.000-08:00

www.ditchprojects.com

New Work

2011-12-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

Phil

2011-11-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

Photolucida Blog

2011-10-22T22:40:00.000-07:00

Laura Moya, the director of photolucida, gave me a nice mention on the photolucida blog. Thanks Laura!

Check it out here:
Photolucida Blog

Hunting Trip

2011-10-21T00:56:00.000-07:00

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

Arrowed

2011-09-27T14:40:00.001-07:00

I shall present

2011-09-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

I got some good news recently. I have been accepted to be a "graduate student presenter" at the 2012 national conference of the Society of Photographic Education. The conference will be held in San Francisco from March 22-25th. It will be a wonderful opportunity for you to see me practice stuttering and making awkward jokes. Please Come!

For more information on the SPE conference click here.

For more information on awkward speeches click here.

New Video

2011-08-31T23:27:00.001-07:00

Game Bag (Headlights) from Brooks Dierdorff on Vimeo.

New Website

2011-08-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

I have a brand new website that is up and ready. Check it out here. Thanks to Lee Rommes for all the help.

Dog Show!

2011-07-28T20:26:00.000-07:00

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

Thesis Proposal

2011-05-23T00:00:00.001-07:00

Brooks Dierdorff

Thesis Proposal

Through the media of photography and video, I interpret the physical and psychological encounters between man and the natural world. Humans seek connection with nature and claim to be its guardians, while at the same time perpetuate its destruction. In my work I confront this contradiction in order to understand it. An interesting and complex relationship with nature exists between nature and hunting culture. Hunting can be the epitome of our oppositional relationship with nature, but it can also represent a communion with nature. For example, in order to get close enough to an animal to kill it, hunters often imitate the sounds and smells of that animal. The relationship of hunters to nature can range from killing only animals that they eat, to protecting land from encroachment so it is available for hunting purposes, to affirming their dominance by killing animals, and everything in between. Hunting can express both an opposition to and an integration with nature all at the same time.

My most recent work explores hunting culture. It is an attempt to understand the complexities of this specific relationship between humans and the natural world. One of the first series of images I produced is titled Trophy. The images in Trophy are appropriated images found on the Internet in which I erased the hunter from the traditional hunting trophy photograph. I am interested in studying hunting trophy images because they collectively present a visual index of an American ideology that traces our cultural history. Hunting trophy photographs comprise an archive of animal objectification and act as an affirmation of human dominance over the natural world. These images are trophies that are meant for others to see. The erasure of the hunter is intended to remove the focus from the hunter and place it on the animal, reversing the roles of importance within the image. The animal is left suspended between life and death, a state of being that only the photograph can provide. The absent space in the image once occupied by the hunter represents a set of invisible codes and assumptions whose power is always felt but never seen. Trophy investigates these latent cultural codes and re-creates the narratives within the images.

Following Trophy I produced a series of short videos in which I use a gun to interact with nature. These videos are a response to an article titled “The Connection” in the November, 2011 issue of Bow Hunting Magazine in which the author describes his experience killing a buck as a bonding experience with nature and with the animal that he killed. In an attempt to understand this attitude toward nature, I tried to connect with nature in the same way. I find that the most interesting aspects of these videos is the way they are an interpretation of the way that hunters interact with nature. Hunters care enough for nature to enter voluntarily into it, and study it, and be with it; but in the end, their purpose is that of destruction. I follow the same pattern in these videos. I spend time with nature, study it, and appreciate it; but in the end, I metaphorically destroy it for the purpose of making an art piece I can show to others. In other videos I take materials used in hunting out of their original context. In my video titled, “Salt Lick,” a salt lick is positioned in a photography studio. I proceed to lick the salt block, placing myself in the position normally occupied by the animal that the hunter desires to kill. Desire is a significant concept in this video piece as the video carries with it sexual undertones.

In another video, “Deflate,” I re-purpose a plastic inflatable deer head and bring it into the deer’s natural habitat. With only my arms visible to the camera, I proceed to deflate the deer head until all the air has been expended. In this video I enact a physical event that is the death of this artificial deer’s life. I push all the air from its head until its breath, which was originally mine, slowly diminishes and finally ceases.

In a recent series of photographs titled Apparati, I scanned the tips of bullets and guns that are typically used for hunting. Placed against a large background of black space, these objects are at first ambiguous and then threatening as the bullets and gun barrels are directed at the viewer standing in front of the image. The bullets and gun barrels are also increased in scale in order to reduce the relative size of the viewer.

These images put the viewer in the place of the victim the instant before death. These apparatuses of death have no point of origin and no context – the only known is that the destination is the viewer. In relationship to hunting these images refer to the moment of, or right before, the animal’s death. Discussions as to whether hunting is right or wrong, if baiting the animal is unfair, etc., do not matter. The photographs in Apparati simply register the cold finality of death.

As a subtext to my work I feel it is important to maintain a critical awareness of the medium I use to represent these complex relations between man and the natural world. Now is the only time in human history that more people have lived in urban environments rather than rural. Most people today therefore experience nature through the mediated sources of photography and video. I feel it important to recognize the role of photography and video in contemporary society and how they are used to represent hunting, the natural world, and human interactions with it.

Over the next year I will produce work which further investigates the complexities of the hunter’s relationship to nature. The end of summer marks the beginning of hunting season in Oregon. During this time I intend to experience hunting personally. I believe that I must become a hunter in order to better understand what it is to be a hunter. I intend to document my hunting experience through video and photography. The final work in the thesis show may be made of this documentation or it may be of my own interpretations of my experiences as a hunter. Many of my notions of hunting come from my limited experiences hunting with family members as an adolescent. I wonder if my perspective will change and if my feelings about hunting will be altered when I return to it twelve years later. I wonder if I will be excited to kill an animal, and I also wonder if I will feel remorse when I do. I anticipate much work will be generated from these experiences.

I see the work in the thesis show incorporating both photography and video. I intended to produce photographs and videos and to make use of appropriated objects found while researching and exploring this topic.

New Video

2011-05-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

Untitled from Brooks Dierdorff on Vimeo.

Washburn Gallery Installation

2011-04-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a show in the Washburn Gallery on the University of Oregon campus. Here is an installation view.

Three images on each wall were placed directly across from each other and a pile of salt was placed at the far end of the gallery.

New Video

2011-04-13T21:47:00.001-07:00

Salt Lick from Brooks Dierdorff on Vimeo.

New Video

2011-04-04T00:06:00.001-07:00

Stick from Brooks Dierdorff on Vimeo.

New Work

2011-03-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

Over the past week or so I have begun to scan the tips of bullets that are commonly used for hunting.

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

Jenna Lechner at the 23 Sandy Gallery

2011-03-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

My talented friend Jenna Lechner will have some work up at the 23 Sandy Gallery in Portland beginning April 1st. Click here for more info.

All images © Jenna Lechner

New Work

2011-02-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

I have been making video work the past few weeks. You can see what I've done so far by clicking here.

William Wegman - Early Videos

2011-02-11T18:34:00.001-08:00

Jerry Saltz Lecture

2011-01-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

If you have the time to watch his full lecture, it is worth every minute.

New Work

2010-12-31T20:26:00.000-08:00

Here are some images from my latest series. I have appropriated images of hunters with their kill, and then erased the hunters.

All Images © Brooks Dierdorff

Cory Arnold Exhibit in Portland

2010-11-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

Cory Arnold will be showing some new work and signing some new books in Portland this Thursday. I'm gonna be there...WILL YOU???

For more info click here

MPLS Photo Center Show

2010-10-27T23:00:00.000-07:00

I was recently invited to show 2 photographs in an alternative process show at the Minneapolis Photo Center. The show will be open from November 5th to December 27th. I don't believe I know a single person in Minneapolis, but if you want to prove me wrong go to the show and let me know! Here are the chosen 2.

Solar Flare

Nebulus

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

MPLS Photo Center website

La Verne Krause Gallery

2010-10-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

I had this piece in the La Verne Krause Gallery last week. The La Verne Krause Gallery is located at the University of Oregon.

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

William Lamson being Epic

2010-09-28T14:35:00.001-07:00

A Line Describing the Sun involved a day long performance in which I followed the path of the sun with a large Fresnel lens mounted on a rolling apparatus. The lens focuses the sun into a 1,600-degree point of light that melts the dry mud, transforming it into a black glassy substance. Over the course of a day, as the sun moves across the sky, a hemispherical arc is imprinted into the lakebed floor.

Anthony Lepore

2010-09-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

All Images © Anthony Lepore

Still Ballin'

2010-09-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Lee Friedlander has come out with a series of images called America by Car. I have always loved his work and it looks like he is bringing the funk once again.

If you would like to see more images click here.

Options

2010-08-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Here is the second photograph that I am making available for sale.

I don't believe that I want to title this image, so it is appropriately named "Untitled."

This image is part of the series "Sliding into Nothing" which can be seen in its entirety at www.brooksdierdorff.com

If you would like to purchase this lovely image, just click on the link to the right.

You, yes you, can buy one of my prints!!!

2010-08-19T21:16:00.000-07:00

Here is the first print available for sale. It is called
"Strong Wind from the West."

Ed McMahon's Head Floating in Space

2010-08-16T00:23:00.000-07:00

New Image

2010-08-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Claudia Angelmaier

2010-07-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

I came across this series by Claudia Angelmaier and thought it was brilliant.

All images © Claudia Angelmaier

Collaboration

2010-07-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

These are 3 images in a series of 7 that were produced a few weeks ago in collaboration with Weston Lyon.

All images © Brooks Dierdorff

2010-06-30T02:34:00.001-07:00

All Images © Brooks Dierdorff

Photos at Blue Sky Gallery

2010-06-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

Quick! Go to Portland and you can see a few of my photos at the Blue Sky Gallery. Thanks to Nick Robles who set it all up. And dont forget to check out Nick's photos too!

Here is their website: http://www.blueskygallery.org/

YESSSSS

2010-05-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

This is a photograph of a bear riding a horse.

Video Installation

2010-05-07T01:18:00.000-07:00

Oil Spill in the Gulf

2010-05-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Is Photography Over?

2010-04-26T20:04:00.000-07:00

Recently the San Francisco MOMA held a symposium asking some big names the question of "Is photography over?" Here is what they said. Good Stuff.

Wolfgang Tillmans

2010-04-13T23:10:00.001-07:00

All images by Wolfgang Tillman

2010-04-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

2010-03-31T22:57:00.000-07:00

2010-03-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

2010-03-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

Freeessshhhhhh

2010-03-01T20:30:00.000-08:00

It takes a special kind of photographer

2010-02-06T11:58:00.000-08:00

Ali G and Noam Chomsky

2010-01-28T02:10:00.000-08:00

And the color of the universe is...

2010-01-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

Nasa astronomers recently computationally averaged the light emitted by a sample of some 200,000 gallaxies. The result was...beige.

Nasa site:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091101.html

Photo of the Day

2010-01-21T19:07:00.000-08:00

We don't get too much blue sky here in Eugene so we paint it on our walls.

Haiti Disaster Relief Fund

2010-01-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

http://www.yele.org/

Nadav Kander “Yangtze, The Long River” Video

2010-01-13T19:23:00.001-08:00

Celine Clanet at Blue Sky

2010-01-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

Just this weekend I saw a great show by the french photographer Celine Clanet at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland. My friend and artist Nick Robles and I even got to see her speak about her work. We just happened to wandered into the gallery only a half hour before she was to give her talk. If you are in the area it is definitely worth checking out.

Cool film by Alex Roman

2010-01-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Revolution is upon us

2010-01-03T23:47:00.001-08:00

My friend and writer Brian Loo recently posted this on his facebook page:

"A fundamental and comprehensive revolution in how we perceive nature and our relationship to it is long overdue."

I was excited to know that something which held such importance for me was also important to others.

In these images I have sought out landscapes that contain evidence of human interactions and then have removed them in photoshop.

Not as a statement of a return to nature, but as a way to heighten the viewers awareness as tothe ways in which we interact with the landscape.

Hasta La Victoria Siempre.

Happy Holidays!!!

2009-12-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

My friend Dan told me about this website and I had to share it.

http://www.sketchysantas.com/

The Most Viewed Dierdorff Photo EVERRRR!!!!!!!

2009-12-01T02:08:00.000-08:00

I don't know it happened.

But it happened.

One of my photos is on Jackson Pollack's Wikipedia page.

I was doing research for an art history paper and ended up on Jackson Pollack's Wikipedia page. I scrolled down a bit and saw a photo of one of Pollacks paintings in the New York MOMA. I said to myself, "Hey, that image looks familiar..."

Then I looked a little closer at the image and said to myself, "Hey, that woman in the photo looks kinda like my mom."

"...wait...that is my mom!!! And I took that photo!"

From my best guess whoever posted the photo got it off my facebook page when I had an a photo album from a trip to New York a couple years ago.

How bout that.

My mom is the one reading the map.

Somebody get me an agent.

Emmet Gowin Interview with John Paul Capanigro

2009-10-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

Emmet Gowin: It might take us a lifetime to find out what it is we need to say. Most of us fall into where our feelings are headed while we're quite young. But the beauty of all this uncertainty would be that in the process of exhausting all the possibilities, we might actually stumble unconsciously into the recognition of something that's useful to us, that speaks to a deep need within ourselves. At the same time, I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can't know exactly what it is we are doing.

So we can't possibly know what it is we really need. At least, from the view point of originality, we can't. And still there can be a good sense to what all our drives and needs are expressing. Our younger son, Isaac, and I were having a very serious conversation about all of the really difficult things when I was reminded of my own kinship to his older brother, Elijah, who is also an artist. What was really important to Elijah, was often something he could not or would not say - Isaac got me to see this. Isaac, on the other hand, told me, "Go ahead, Dad, ask me anything you want. But remember, I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm going to tell you what really is the case. So you have to be careful what you ask." And I took a deep breath and said, "You know, that 's why I so identified with your brother. That is part of why it is so wonderful that he became an artist. What really matters to him, he can not tell you directly, and that's exactly how I was at his age. Everything that really mattered, I couldn't tell anybody."

Of course, this is one of the really important things about art, that you can make more than you can understand at the moment the thing is being made. But the gap between what we recognize inside ourselves – our feelings- and our ability to trust ourselves and to trust exposing ourselves to those ideas, can be great.

Now when I look at my students I see that the old uncertainties are still in business - this is the real dilemma for them. Their program has been to never be wrong. You get bad grades for being wrong. So you have to be right. It's a potent conflict.

John Paul Caponigro: Yes. At worst that can crush spirit, at best it can generate a lot of energy for work. I would think today with pervasive notions about plurality and subjectivity, that anything would be okay and that pressure wouldn't be brought to bear that generates that kind of work.

EG: You're absolutely right and what a good point. The fact that something is unsayable, that you are emotionally restricted from saying or even recognizing consciously what your own spirit is struggling with, energizes one's work. That is exactly where good work comes from. And that's why you can't ask somebody to find out what it is they need to do. It's like going to a doctor and getting a prescription for what will make you well. You go and fill the prescription, you take the chemical, and nothing happens - because that's not what's wrong with you. That's the dilemma. You can take the cure for the wrong problem. However, we want to put the accent on the creative imagination and putting ourselves in accord with our own lives and the energies that made us.

JPC: Exactly. You can try and cure the wrong disease. Or you can try and cure just one part of it. Western medicine says cure the body, mind and soul will follow.

EG: Again, you've added a big dimension to what we've been thinking about, because those things are not separated. And that's the same sense in which I jumped on the idea of saying to a young person, "You have to find out what it is you want to do."

JPC: You don't want them to get trapped in the materials or in other people's answers.

EG: But that's a parental emotion at work when one says I don't want a student to be trapped. The truth is, I'd be perfectly happy if they would be "trapped" within the experience their own authentic difficulties. If they would be trapped on their own, then any freedoms they discovered would be their own. Which is what interests me, because I believe that the joy of your own discovery is what confirms your own aliveness, your own value.

So in this sense it's cool to be wrong. It's so essential, so necessary. It's so appropriate to be confused, to be muddled, to be unsure. We preach clarity. Get your ideas organized. Get your thinking straight. And it's the kind of stuff we all got from our parents, because that's the role of parents. But it is the aliveness of the unguarded intuition and the persistence of our own feelings that guide us to our discoveries.

JPC: If I had a teacher who just said what you said, I think my life would have been completely different. I had teachers who said, "You've got to do, A to do B to do C." Either that or nothing.

EG: I did a little presentation the other day. I was showing slides. Somebody stopped me in the middle of the presentation when we came to a picture of my niece, Nancy, with her arms twisted, entwined, holding two eggs. And this woman saw a connection. She said, "This is just like Diane Arbus' picture of the child holding two hand grenades. Which one came first?" Well to the best of my understanding there was no conscious connection between these two pictures. But what I have realized since is that every authentic newness, and every authentic discovery has a huge element of chance. It is not the conflict with influence or with Arbus' picture, or which one takes precedence by being newer, but something much more fundamental. Like all real discoveries, it was the wisdom of her own body that taught her to make that gesture. Something she could not have explained to herself, no more than I could have explained to myself why it seemed so appropriate when she did that. She had come up to me with two eggs. I was under a dark cloth, focusing on something else. It was in a yard. And she would often at that age appeal for attention; "Let's go make a neat picture. Let's go do something. Can you tell me a story? Let 's just sit here." Some little thing. As soon as I took my head from under the cloth, she was standing there saying, "Look what I found in the barn." Until this moment she was just standing there in an ordinary stance. But as soon as she had my attention she embellished what she was telling me by crossing her arms and making a wonderful presentation of the two eggs. Now, did she know where that came from? I don't think so. She was not reading the literature of photography but she was intimately connected to the intelligence of her own body. And that , in the end, is the source from which both of these photographs draw their authenticity.

Joseph Campbell refers to this as the wisdom body, the way that our bodies are already in touch with what is needed. People , for instance, say they understand themselves, that they know what they are doing. But can we explain what's going on inside our bodies when food is being digested? If you had to understand, you'd starve. But we live by the grace of the simple fact that our bodies take good care of us. It's in this sense that I tell students that they have to be able to trust themselves. What we all have to do is to use this bodily wisdom, staying close to the kind of processes and ideas and emotional anchors that are most appropriate to our feelings, to ourselves. You can't evade your ideas, which are precious to us, but micromanaging our ideas can be as much of a hindrance as they are a great help unless they are feelingly related to this older wisdom within which we were born.

When we are young we are self conscious, we think about what people think about us. As artists, the more we think about our audience and what we are trying to present, the less, perhaps, we are in touch with the physicality of experience, the particulars, the minute details of our experience.

JPC: One of the things that attracts me to photography most is that it leads beyond my preconceptions about the world, its inhabitants, and myself. The discipline of photography asks me to go out and look again. Every time I do I see new things. I think those experiences help one find one's true voice, too. Really, it's learning to listen to gifts we never knew the world had to give, never knew we had to give.

EG: About twenty years ago, Frederick Sommer was interviewed on the local television station. And the interviewer asked him, "Well what makes your pictures different?" And he could not answer. Or he just could not quite start off on that note. So he said, until recently, until photography came onto the scene, art was an additive process. Then photography came along. The advantage of photography was that you went out, and you were at the mercy of what you found. That's a very different thing than building an image element by element, constructing the composition. In a photograph everything matters. Not just the featured star of the picture, the subject, but a background over which you really have no control. And the emphasis here is discovery and the multitude of ways things can be deeply interrelated, and yet go unobserved. His assertion was that this was photography's real advantage. The photograph is able to synthesize what is before the camera in a way that we, ourselves, cannot.. The beauty of this synthesis would be the fact that it is a reintroduction to reality. No one view better than another but fresh, something we could have never dreamed up. Sommer would later say that it was enough to come home with a sliver of experience , a sliver of reality , that would already be miraculous.

EG: I remember when Elijah was doing his graduate work at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I telephoned Elijah to ask how his first critique went . He said, "Oh, it went fine." And he said, "You know, all you need is one good comment." "Just one little thing to hold on to."

EG: Everything really good in our experience is in some way beyond our control.

JPC: In one sense that's very true. It’s beyond our control and beyond us. There is a process of sharing between the universe and us.

EG: Exactly. Where do our images come from, might be a reasonable question. If I put this in terms of something that's totally first hand, in terms of discovering one's own subject and the appropriateness of content to one's self, do we really choose our subjects or do they choose us? Let me illustrate. In a recent class seminar my students caught me a little off guard. This class contained mostly young women. A little surprise of warmth and vitality came into their faces as they asked, "Tell us again how you met Edith at a YMCA dance on Saturday night." So of course I told them as best as I could how I met Edith. Both they and I know that my life would not be the same without her. They think that's amazing. And I guess I do too.

What we really need, we can't write the prescription for. You can't predict what it is you need to do. You just see each other, and you're interested. That's all. It's beyond what you can analyze. I think that the process of making art also exists in a terrain that is beyond analysis. Inspiration is unfashionable, but it does on occasion, exist.

JPC: I think any commentary or contextualization of art, if it's sensible, can only deepen its mystery. One can't explain or explain away mystery.

EG: Just the way you're saying that, which of course I like, makes me think of Joseph Campbell saying that the task of the artist is to revitalize the perennial myth in terms of the experience of our common contemporary experience. If something is so lucky as to revitalize the perennial mythology in terms of our local personal human experience today, by definition, it seems, this should be something universal. It doesn't even matter so much that it should be understood or recognized by everyone. However, the more a work of art is recognized, the more it is shared, the richer we can feel through our own participation in this celebration. But that's all you actually get to have. History takes care of the rest.

The fact that we are not in control is what's so good about it. Because if we could control everything perfectly, we would lose the newness and bring ourselves back to where things answer to the authority that we are subjectively impregnated with. We just can't rid ourselves of this sense of authority. And that's very close to the parental deal, too.

Let me repeat this again the essence of that quote from Sommer,because it's important, ‘Art is an additive process and the thing about photography is we go out and we're at the mercy of what we find. That's the real discovery.’ You didn't put it together but rather you found it. Moments later, as if to summarize and bring the thought full circle, Sommer shifted the emphasis. "The important thing." he said, "is quality of attention span, and to use it for acceptance rather than for negation." And you see, that really takes a person and shakes them and says, look, let go of the pretense.

How do you find your subject? You probably find your subject by working through someone else's subject until you actually can do something close to it for yourself. This is exactly how it happened for me. I was shown a copy of The Family of Man in 1961, while I was in a drawing class. And I think it was being shown to me to put me in my place. Don't get so excited about photography. There are people a whole lot better than you are. I zoomed through it quickly and I found a few things that I thought were really memorable. In particular, l had come to the very end of the book when I saw another picture that seemed to have the very same feeling as a picture that I'd seen in the front. When I looked back to the beginning to see why I should have thought there was any connection between the two, I found that both the feeling and the name under the images were the same, Robert Frank. I had intuitively understood the feeling of the picture, which was much better than understanding who took it, an intellectual thing. So, I, right then, felt that this person carries that feeling with them wherever they go. And I must have some of that feeling in me, because I got it the first time. I knew that that would be a basis for me. I couldn't have told this then; I'm telling you this 30 years later. I knew intuitively right then and there that that's how you know. If you can feel that two things are made by the same personality, then you can recognize when something matches your personality. It is yours, and it doesn't have to be yours.

Ironically, the people involved were the same people that I took my apprenticeship with. I tried to do Cartier Bresson in Virginia. But it was much harder to do than Robert Frank. Virginia looked like Robert Frank had just been there. Virginia did not look like Paris, It's not really surprising that the Virginia I knew between 1961 and 1965, looked like The Americans. Frank’s pictures were made between '55 and '57 but it was his genius to recognize the value of that world through images. It was only after I felt like I had come so close to Frank's work that I realized I could keep on making pictures in this vein until I would become someone that I am not. It would be right to let go of what I had, in a way, mastered.

To be in the presence of our own first hand experience, is probably the only way we can save ourselves. See what I was saying about Robert Frank; what I had to give up was being answerable to Frank. What I had to become was answerable to what was happening in front of me and how I felt about it. That's what you have to give up, the authority of an answer and replace it with the authenticity of the experience. And that's why I want to emphasize and celebrate what Sommer was saying. We're at the mercy of what we find. That's the big advantage. It's a big advantage.

It's difficult to say why I personally feel such a need to underwrite chance. I certainly believe in imaginative invention, but I also know how important it is to be open to chance, which is always the most creative of forces. Perhaps , also, it is simply the strong feeling I have about my own work, that it all, somehow, amid my own struggles, appeared almost out of nowhere, as a gift.

The thing is that you can't answer to authority. You have to answer to what corresponds to your experience, the way in which your experience and the image correspond in an inner truthfulness. I think this is what Jacob Bronowski means when he say that he "finds the act of creation to lie in the discovery of a hidden likeness". And that the "act of appreciation re-enacts the act of creation". I feel that the authenticity of that likeness is something we seize finally by force of our own intuition, our own perception.

The discovery itself must be able to provide a home for our feelings, its that simple. Authorship, in this sense, is so much less important than how the picture speaks to us.

JPC: Nature and spirituality seem to be enduring themes for so many of us.

EG: Spirituality is the natural response to the totality of nature, of which we’re a part. For me, it is a felt relationship to nature, of which I recognize myself as a micro part of a macro whole. One of my youthful intuitions was; don't make any conscious decisions. If God wants you, he knows where you are.

It's odd to me now when I think back on the kind of person I was 25 years ago, making pictures of Edith's family and so forth. I felt then that if pictures weren't of people, they weren't about what was really important. Behavior, our behavior, that's what's important. The way we treat children is what matters. How to pass from being a child oneself into being an adult, and how to treat children so that they become adults, proper adults, that would have been it. So my idea then was, why would you want to study anything else?

I think it would have shocked me if somebody had told me that later I would be looking at acts of destruction or at toxic waste, or places where something terrible was done. I would have thought that's not my make up. But I began to see ourselves in a different scale, a different distance. You know, it would be very easy to be swept up by one's political convictions. But just because one doesn't make so called political art doesn't mean that you don't have convictions. Anyone who is as serious about what they do as an artist, for a long time, has obviously got convictions. When I was making the family photographs it was during the Vietnam War and we knew exactly what kind of time we were living in. The television brought that to us every evening. To not give yourself to an activity that you feel is wrong, is to be doing what you should be doing. To not do what is wrong and to do what you feel is right is a political act.

2009-10-19T19:30:00.000-07:00

2009-10-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

air and light and time and space

2009-10-14T11:53:00.000-07:00

" - you know, I've either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to
create."

no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

-Charles Bukowski

2009-10-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

2009-10-05T15:00:00.000-07:00

A little Baldessari today...

2009-10-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

©Ansel Adams

"Some photographers take reality... and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation."
- Ansel Adams

I love this quote by Mr. Adams. It's something I think a lot about. Ansel makes it seem like when a photographer imposes his or her thoughts it is a bad thing, but didn't Ansel do just that in the way he so idealistically photographed nature? In the way he made his images more dramatic by dodging and burning?

2009-09-28T13:54:00.001-07:00

These are a few images from a new series I have been working on. Mr. Steinbeck explains it best:

“An animal resting or passing by leaves crushed grass, footprints, and perhaps droppings, but a human occupying a room for one night prints his character, his biography, his recent history, and sometimes his future plans and hopes. I further believe that personality seeps into walls and is slowly released. This might well be an explanation of ghosts and such manifestations. Although my conclusions may be wrong, I seem to be sensitive to the spoor of the human. Also, I am not shy about admitting that I am an incorrigible Peeping Tom. I have never passed an unshaded window without looking in, have never closed my ears to a conversation that was none of my business. I can justify or even dignify this by protesting that in my trade I must know people, but I suspect that I am simply curious.”

-John Steinbeck
Travels with Charlie

2009-09-25T12:36:00.000-07:00

2009-09-24T19:06:00.001-07:00

Brooks Dierdorff

Catherine Opie

A few images from my show at Ditch Projects

Ditch Show Install Photos

Show at Ditch Projects

New Work

Phil

Photolucida Blog

Hunting Trip

Arrowed

I shall present

New Video

New Website

Dog Show!

Thesis Proposal

New Video

Washburn Gallery Installation

New Video

New Video

New Work

Jenna Lechner at the 23 Sandy Gallery

New Work

William Wegman - Early Videos

Jerry Saltz Lecture

New Work

Cory Arnold Exhibit in Portland

MPLS Photo Center Show

La Verne Krause Gallery

William Lamson being Epic

Anthony Lepore

Still Ballin'

Options

You, yes you, can buy one of my prints!!!

Ed McMahon's Head Floating in Space

New Image

Claudia Angelmaier

Collaboration

Photos at Blue Sky Gallery

YESSSSS

Video Installation

Oil Spill in the Gulf

Is Photography Over?

Wolfgang Tillmans

Freeessshhhhhh

It takes a special kind of photographer

Ali G and Noam Chomsky

And the color of the universe is...

Photo of the Day

Haiti Disaster Relief Fund

Nadav Kander “Yangtze, The Long River” Video

Celine Clanet at Blue Sky

Cool film by Alex Roman

Revolution is upon us

Happy Holidays!!!

The Most Viewed Dierdorff Photo EVERRRR!!!!!!!

Emmet Gowin Interview with John Paul Capanigro

air and light and time and space

"Some photographers take reality... and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation." - Ansel Adams

"Some photographers take reality... and impose the domination of their own thought and spirit. Others come before reality more tenderly and a photograph to them is an instrument of love and revelation."
- Ansel Adams