Anna Beeke is a freelance documentary and events photographer based out of Brooklyn, NY. She is a graduate of the International Center of Photography’s Photojournalism and Documentary Photography certificate program and is currently pursuing her MFA at the School of Visual Arts.
What forces lured you into the forest for this new project?
‘That’s a good phrase you use—lured into the forest— because I am interested in exploring exactly that question in my new body of work: what draws people into the forest, what kind of encounters happen there, what do we leave behind? But to return to your question more specifically: before I was born, my parents lived in Seatlle. I was conceived in Washington State, but I grew up in Washington, DC, and I had never been to the Pacific Northwest. This is going to sound fanciful but recently I had been struck by the compulsion to go to the place where I began life and the conviction that if I did, I would surely find something there. I guess I found the forest.
‘I rented a car spent a week alone on the road, mostly in the San Juan Islands and the Olympic Peninsula. I was experiencing a lot of anxiety about life and photography and what would be the next project, and it wasn’t until I entered the Hoh and Quinalt rainforests that all of that melted away, I felt a sense of peace and magic, and I began photographing the forest and the encounters I had within it.’
There is so much myth and folklore around the forest. What are some of your inspirations for this work?
‘Well, I grew up on the Brothers Grimm and the Andrew Lang Fairy Books and as a young girl I was always trying to write my own fairytales, as well. The forest plays a major role in the majority of these stories: as a place of enchantment, the landscape of an epic journey or the fulfillment of a quest, but also as the unknown, a dark and dangerous place outside of normal society where anything can happen.
‘Many cultures have myths about forests and the creatures that live there, such as the Dryads of Greek mythology, or elves, which can be found in the mythologies of several regions. I am interested less in specific tales and more in the perceived mystery and magic of the forest, and how these ideas have been constructed in our collective consciousness through myth and fairy tales. My working method follows the structure of many of these fairy tales: I go into the forest in search of adventure, the unknown, and chance encounters with strangers, and my experiences in the forest become not myth or written tale, but the images in this body of work, which are still also firmly grounded in reality as well as magic.’
Because I know you, I can see traces of you in the pictures. Is that leading towards something that will be a more pronounced articulation of self portraiture?
‘Because this work is made in an intuitive and experiential way, I can’t say with absolute certainty what it’s leading towards. I’ve never worked much in self-portraiture before, and I’m a bit shy of inserting myself (visibly, at least) into my projects, but I did begin to experiment with that here; perhaps I was feeling a more personal connection to the landscape and how it was wrapped up in my genesis. In fact, when I went on this trip, I had recently watched Agnes Varda’s Les Plages d’Agnes in film class at SVA. Varda has a phrase that stuck with me, something like: “If we open up people, we find landscapes – if you opened me up, you’d find beaches.” I kept thinking: “If you opened me up, you’d find forests.”
‘I come from a more photojournalistic training and I’ve always had serious misgivings about going onto someone else’s territory and photographing them, though I’ve done it quite a bit. I’ve also had trouble photographing my territory, as in making a project that is completely and explicitly self-referential. The forest, to me, is neutral territory; it is everybody’s forest. In my mind this makes it the perfect meeting.’
This post was contributed by photographer Aliza Eliazarov.
Barred Owl
Deborah Samuel is a Canadian photographer currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After an impressive career in commercial photography, Deborah now focuses exclusively on her personal photographic practice. Her latest body of work, Elegy, suggests the poetic intricacy of lives once lived. Rising above scientific documentation, the images reflect Samuel’s compassionate consideration of the natural world. Elegy is currently on exhibition in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum and will also be a feature in the 2012 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
Armadillo
Your photographs speak to the sensitivity and fragility of life. Why did you choose to examine the skeletons of birds and vertebrates, and what do they represent for you personally?
‘I had gone through a lot of loss with my animals over a period of 5 years and was amazed at their individual resilience in their will to live, how fragile we all are and how persistent the cycle of life is.
‘Two years ago the Gulf Oil spill happened and I was mesmerized with the disaster…watching the counter on the bottom left of the screen forecast how many gallons of oil were being spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. It was horrifying to think that they could not stop this. Then the photos of the oil-covered birds started to be broad-casted. I wanted to go to Louisiana to photograph the oil covered birds as their plight was the iconic face of this disaster, but was unable to get access to photograph these birds due to regulations from the government and BP. I thought if I cannot go to the birds then I will bring the birds to me. Because of the nature of this disaster I made the leap to skeletons; they represent the final chapter if we do not reconsider what we are doing to the planet and to life forms that share the planet with us.’
How did you go about sourcing the skeletons used in your photographs, and at what point had you been offered the Royal Ontairo Museum’s collection of skeletons as a resource?
‘I initially went on the Internet to source bones. I made a connection with a woman in South America who had very interesting specimens, so I dealt primarily with her. The ROM had invited me to work within their skeleton collection approximately 4 months before Elegy opened at the ROM.’
Owl
In your photographic process you have predominantly worked with film, but with this series you have employed digital photography in a very interesting way. Can you explain your process?
‘I worked with a scanner to capture the imagery. Much like working on a canvas only an electronic version of the canvas. There has been an interesting debate re-fixed vs. fluid image which had made me think a lot, especially in that I was making the conversion from film to digital. Film is fixed in a moment in time and fluid is the ever changing file of the digital domain. What became interesting is that when scanning I realized I was fixed with a number of limitations given my process and that I had to work within this fixed dilemma in order to produce the fluid images.’
Shark
Can you talk a bit about your favorite image in the Elegy series?
‘I have many favorites so this is a challenging question as there are different aspects that speak to me in the exhibition. I would probably have to say Cardinal and Solitaire II. The underlying structure in the photograph is why I started working with skeletons in the first place. After watching the oil covered birds from the Gulf Oil Spill try to figure out what had happened to them I really thought a lot about how this spill had not only impacted their habitat but also its impact on their interpersonal relationships with each other; how it affected their homes….their relationships with their young. How would they look after each other now…and how had this impacted their daily structure and their relationship with others?
‘Cardinal and Solitaire.II speaks of the intimacy in relationship. I was fascinated by the residual animation in the bone that was left in the last remaining evidence of a life lived.’
Cardinal+ Solitare
This post was contributed by photographer Coey Kerr.
Jackie Onasis
Philip Karlberg is a Stockholm based photographer who splits his time equally between editorial and commercial projects. In this series Pin Art, commissioned by Plaza Magazine, over 1,200 sticks were used to ’sculpt’ the celebrity faces. Karlberg is represented by MINK MGMT.
John Belushi
Steve McQueen
Lady Gaga
Johnny Depp
Karl Lagerfeld
John Crawford is an Auckland-based commercial and fine art photographer. These images are from his series, Aerial Nudes.
Photo by Charlie Brophy
The topic for the next Feature Shoot group show is self-portraits.
Photographers are invited to submit images to:
submissions@featureshoot.comUp to five images can be submitted (480 pixels wide, 72 dpi, under 65kb).
The deadline for submissions is May 24, 2012.
Brian Paumier, of the photography duo Trujillo-Paumier took time away from his successful, commercial career to pursue an MFA at ICP-Bard resulting in Act of Faith, his autobiographical thesis about colonialism, faith, and role models.
Act of Faith is a body of work that includes still photos, video, and mixed media installation, often repeating the same images in different forms. Paumier, who spent eight years in the military, two of them fighting in Iraq, found inspiration for his show from two stickers. One was of the Virgin of Guadalupe and the other of the combat infantry badge he received for six months of service in a war zone. When combined they came to represent Paumier’s experience in Iraq. Paumier lived with many of the men he portrays in his work for years at a time and took note of their ritual of thanking a supreme being for a great year. “I decided to use the 200-year-old tradition called Morisma as an offering to the Guadalupe for her help in Iraq,” said Paumier.
Faith also finds its way into Paumier’s portraits of young male figures who represent the role models of his youth. One in particular, his self-portrait, represents the “duality of male role models in my upbringing,” said Paumier. These two versions of himself pay tribute to his uncles, one a top gun pilot and the other a “tap dancing, show tunes, illustrator, queen,” according to Paumier. “I never saw anything wrong with wanting to be these two kinds of men. Some people would want to put a wall between them, but I’ve always lived my life thinking I could be both.”
This post was contributed by photographer Aliza Eliazarov.
