I often want to create something physical, usually cobbled together from stuff I have lying around. Nothing big, but something I can share with the world in some small but tangible way. I quite like pamphlets and hand-made books, little limited editions that I can leave for people to find. This time, a little pamphlet of portraits of dogs.
Side one of the sheet that I fold to make a 4″x5″ pamphlet.Side two of the sheet that I fold to make a 4″x5″ pamphlet.
After a few minutes with a publishing program I had the pages laid out so I could print them double sided, fold in half twice, add a cover, and staple.
The cover for “Taco and Tess. Portraits” pamphlet.
The center spread for “Taco and Tess. Portraits” pamphlet.
I don’t know who, if anybody, will take these pamphlets, and I don’t really care. Maybe somebody will just thumb through them. Maybe people will just move them around to get at the good books. It doesn’t matter. For me making the pamphlet was the goal.
Zoom.Whiteboards. Smartboards. iPads. Tablets. Video. Flipped classrooms. Clickers. MOOCs. How much effort do we put into designing educational technologies? Who benefits from that effort? Rarely, it seems, the student (if the educational disaster of the last two years is any indication).
The blackboard was introduced into the classroom in the 19th century, and within a couple decades was ubiquitous. Since then pedagogues (and social critics) have praised and condemned the simple blackboard with its screechy chalk and dusty erasers. But there’s something dependable about its simplicity, and little evidence that the many innovations introduced since then have improved pedagogical effectiveness.
#220831: Blackboard as educational technology.
quid est nōmen tibi? quomōdo tē vocās? nōmen mihi est … ego mē vocō …
canis cattus fēlès je reconnais il/elle reconnaît recitāte
There is something almost poetic about the traces left on blackboards. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Momentary vestiges of teaching and resistance.
I make “limited edition” books, something between art books and photo books. They are often experiments that will never move beyond my work table, hence the “limited edition” label. I play with format, with layout, with folding pages or cut pages. Some are little more than pamphlets. I always learn something from these books.
This “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” is another type of book. This type I tend to make for somebody I know or someplace I frequent. In this case, I assembled photographs I had taken while at Ashford Farm, a local horse farm. Over the past couple years I had spent a number of days there watching the riders and looking around the farm. I had taken pictures of horses in their stalls, people riding horses, kids in the summer riding camps, and other parts of the farm that seemed interesting to me. These episodic books are “limited editions” insofar as I suspect only a very small number of people will be interested in them.
Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022 first draft title pageDraft pages with notes, from an early draft of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
Like all such books, “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” went through a number of revisions in my head before I got around to printing a draft. For me, printing and assembling a draft is essential, even if the draft is small and printed on cheap copy paper. I have to see the sequence, thumb through the pages, test the folding pages and see how partial pages work.
When I’ve worked out the initial problems and arranged the pages the way I want, I tend to print a full-size draft.
Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022 another draft title pageOne of the pages in the draft of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022”Fold-out page before folding out, in a draft of Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.Fold-out page after folding out, in a draft of Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.
I spend a day or so looking at this draft just to see how it feels, especially things like format and dimensions, and to catch the last problems or issues that have thus far escaped my notice. I also think about things like binding, covers, and paper. When I’m happy with the draft (or no longer unhappy with it), I print the final version and assemble the book.
The final cover of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”Tack hanging in door from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”A horse looks out of its stable, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”A horse walking in a ring, as seen through the fence, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
For “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” I assembled 51 photos I had taken last year and this year. Landscape orientation with a number of fold-out pages seemed ideal. The pages would be large enough to accommodate both landscape and portrait photos, and the fold-outs would let me include some 16×9 proportion shots. I used a binding (often referred to as “Japanese Stab Binding” though also similar to the binding used on “Chinese-style notebooks”) and cover that echoed utilitarian notebooks. I used a smooth, bright matte paper for a couple copies and bamboo-washi paper for another. Each copy is unique — not only did I print them on different paper (my favorite was the Awagami bamboo paper, mainly because of the feel), but I also used different thread for the stitching and in one case different stock for the cover.
Here are a few more photos from this book.
A horse looks out from its stable, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”A young girl pausing to look at a horse in the barn, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”Tack hanging on the wall in the tack room, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”A stirrup, from the final version of “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022.”
In the end, I made three copies of this book, one for me, one for a friend, and one for the people who own Ashford Farm and let me loiter and take pictures. These episodic projects exist somewhere between creativity and art. I am happy to have made this book and need not share it with anybody, hence creativity. But it does something more when I share it with an audience that might be interested, hence art.
I might make another copy or two. I might not. If you want one, let me know. Maybe we can work something out.
History is filled with people who have decided to wander off, who have followed some call that most of us can’t hear. Some reappear; some do not. At times I think I hear faint whispers of that call, and I wonder ….
Sometimes I struggle to resist the lure of the forest. What would I see if I just wandered out into the trees? How far would I walk before realizing that I couldn’t find my way back? Sometimes I fight the urge not to get lost.
I find something compelling about Bernd and Hilla Becher’s book, Typologies of Industrial Buildings. Juxtaposing numerous individual examples of industrial structures highlights their similarities and their differences. It also draws attention to often overlooked or ignored architecture, encouraging us to see design and aesthetic choices, to view these utilitarian structures as art. While each of their photographs, taken alone, is interesting, when taken together they are a sort of conceptual art, as well as a study in form.
Infrastructure #220621.1
The Bechers’ work lies behind my interest in otherwise overlooked infrastructure. Windmills, manhole covers, utility poles, high tension towers, bridge supports. These are all opportunities to focus on the mundane in an effort to find the interesting.
Infrastructure #220621.2
Manhole covers. Lots of people have found manhole covers interesting. Some people use manhole covers to make great prints. Other people have spent time photographing them. But what happens when we consider them in large numbers? Can we produce a typology of manhole covers? Sewer covers, storm drain covers, utility covers, and communications covers. In the process, can we see the traces of their histories? The imperfections, individual marks of fabrication, scars, and design quirks of individual foundries. Do they also reveal the history of industry, consolidation, and shipping? Local foundry names giving way to larger, regional foundries, which are then replaced foundries in foreign countries.
Infrastructure #220621.3
I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing here. But maybe there is.
I returned to a place I’ve visited before — remnants of an old corral quite literally just off the beaten path. While not particularly remote, it does require driving down a bumpy, dusty road and hiking an hour or so across a shadeless cross-country route. The time and physical exertion required would, I thought, limit the traffic, and the general “take only photographs and leave only footprints” attitude shared, I had hoped, by hikers and campers would limit damage.
Landscape #200513
In two years, however, the beaten path has spread to include the old corral. For most people, there’s little reason to linger by this corral. It is not their destination and not really on the way. Yet clearly lots of people do wander over to it. So many that the vegetation no longer grows as it used to. And in addition to any photographs visitors have taken, somebody also seems to have taken one of the old corral posts.
Landscape #220513
I stood in roughly the same spot when I took these photos, exactly two years apart. Whatever else photographs do, they can make visible the passage of time and our deleterious effects on ourselves and the world around us.
I’ve been this way before. I know where this path leads. But as with each visit, something is different this time. The path is both familiar and foreign, reshaped each season by the forces of nature and the other people who have come this way. While I have found solitude for the moment, the footprints in the gravel remind me that I am far from alone. These remote spaces are haunted by the countless people who have passed through them before, leaving traces of their passing. Petroglyphs, moqui steps, and ruins of structures in alcoves high up on cliff faces — people have been wandering these places for centuries. Far from remote, these canyons and plateaus were home.
Landscape #220512.1
The remnants of our occupation and exploitation are easy to find. Some ancient. Some quite recent. Most now inscrutable — what does “6R” mean and why was it important to carve “6R” into the rock, I wonder.
Landscape #220513.1
I have been this way before, following behind untold numbers of other people. Although empty each time I pass, the path is well traveled. But this time, something is different. Next time, too, something will be different. Heraclitus’ comments are as applicable to sand and stone as they are to rivers.
We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
Landscape #220312
That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
