Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Okanagen September '72





This is more stuff from my "Andrew Wyeth" period. I put this in quotes because I am sure Andrew Wyeth would not have wanted to be associated with my photography. Andrew Wyeth didn't just paint feel good landscapes intended to arouse an emotional response in alienated urbanites who have vague warm fuzzy feelings about rural life. Andrew Wyeth had a mystical connection with his subjects about which he had something to say which more often than not was rather the opposite of warm and fuzzy. Anyway, I am not going to play art critic here.

My photos of decayed and ruined farms can be read as a commentary on what has happened in the last three generations of my own family. My grandfather Elmer was a homesteader in Montana who married another homesteader. Life was very hard. He worked with cattle and tamed wild horses (broke them). He worked as a mechanic, he ran a grain elevator, he worked and worked and worked and when the dust bowl came he was driven by hardship into exile once again from Montana to Idaho and then again to Spokane Washington. My photos of farm buildings and equipment sinking into ruin are echos from my past not just pretty pictures of farms.

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