Mar 1, 2013 | Blog
Welcome to my blog. Anyone out there reading this, I thank you. This website and blog are an interface for me, a place to act and react to the world of photography. A public journal. Ruminations on 30 plus years of involvement with the medium. A place for me to post thoughts and ideas about photography, the pursuit of the image and the gift of involvement. I will also feature images by others that inspire me to think, create and be a better photographer and person.
I learn something everyday about photography. It is a miraculous invention akin to fire, the wheel and the printing press, this profound ability that we have to image ourselves, our lives and our environment, to create both fact and fiction. Photography is my life. I understand how people fall in love with photography. I did 30 plus years ago. I don’t care that everyone is a photographer these days. I only care that I have gotten to be one. That said I feature this image: a self portrait made outside my front door. I photograph what lies before me. Sometimes I make it up, invent it and alter reality. Other times, I am true to reality. This image reflects that: I was looking for a picture due to a need to make one at that moment, camera in hand and good light, outside my front door. Images are everywhere.
My Grandmother, who quit school after the sixth grade, was a remarkable photographer. She had an eye and she had the desire to take photographs, a need, despite hard times, no money, a stark life full of hard work, many children, and a loveless marriage. Yet she always had her camera. So I dedicate this blog to her, even though she was mostly unhappy, I know that photography made her happy. I imagine her on the farm, 75 miles from the nearest town, waiting for the mail to arrive with the newest roll of developed film with prints. It must have been one of those moments when everything else fell away, all the chores and work and stress while she looked at the images she had made months before. I know she felt joy at that moment. She once told me that there is always a picture to be made. The photograph below is of my father, out in the field with a chair. It is a perfect moment, his hand hovers above the horizon, his expression is serious, nothing else exists at that moment, just him and her, the chair, the empty horizon, the breeze, the smell of the grasses. She must have carried that good chair all the way out into the field, camera and boy in hand just to make this photograph and I have loved it for many years. It is the most important thing to make a photograph when the need makes itself known, when the recognition takes place.
ADDENDUM/UPDATE: As a toddler, my father was reluctant to learn to walk and it must have been frustrating for my grandmother on the farm with a two year old who did not walk. She took several pictures of him (without the chair), and left him in a field to make his own way back to the farmhouse. I don’t think he has walked yet before this photograph was made. I hope it did soon after.I love the stories photographs create and how there are so many worlds inside one image. Five years since I started this website and am happy to report I still love photography. I am still learning and still making photographs
Feb 26, 2013 | Portfolio
Featured image: Stanley Ave South and South Albro
I have been working since 2013 on a project called NightTime. These images were all made within the neighborhood where I live near the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle. The neighborhood is a mixture of industrial and residential structures, full of train yards, factories, overpasses, trailers, small homes and beautiful gardens. Situated at the end of Boeing Field, it endures an enormous amount of truck, train and airplane traffic. In 2014, the Argo Yard Bridge, connecting the neighborhood to downtown Seattle via Airport Way was closed for reconstruction for about 18 months. It was a time of heavy construction on the bridge mixed with greatly reduced truck traffic along the streets. Georgetown was in the throes of change. My photographs try to capture both that change and the historical nature of the area.
At night Georgetown is alive. The freeway, the train yards, the Duwamish River and Boeing Field create the four edges of the neighborhood. These edges hum with noise and movement, yet there is solitude to be found on the tracks after trains pass, in the alleys after planes land and on the streets when the trucks are silent.
The Nighttime images are a work in progress. This portfolio will continue to evolve and change, just as Georgetown has done. The images are printed in an edition of 10/15 x 10 inches. All images are shot with low ISO, long exposure digital capture and printed on rag paper with archival inks. Please inquire about print availability, size and pricing. Please see the blog for updates about this portfolio: ten of these images were in the viewing drawers of Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon during 2016. They were shown at Gallery 110 in Seattle for the month of September, 2017.
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I photographed people with fireworks for the three years along the Duwamish River in Seattle on the Fourth of July. Initially I was interested in the time exposure, to see just how much I could blend and blur the fireworks, people and the light to create a workable image. Reviewing the work after the first year, I realized it was the people surrounded by the light and the fireworks that really interested me. I wasn’t making portraits per se but photographs about people who moved like dancers, within an atmosphere that was mysterious, intriguing and ultimately unsettling. Shooting these events, I felt like I was in a war zone that was dangerous and at the same time, incredibly beautiful. These images were made with digital capture and printed on 17 x 11 inch rag paper with archival inks. They are available from the artist in a limited edition of 25. Please contact me for information on pricing and edition availability.
With this portfolio are a series of posters that are also for sale for 25.00/each. Please inquire or go to the shop page to buy one….
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I made these images of the Red Hook section of Brooklyn when I lived there for 10 years from 1981-1991. I wasn’t consciously trying to make a statement about the this dilapidated area, I just photographed what unfolded before me as I walked the neighborhood with my dog, Willie. Having grown up on Puget Sound, I loved the waterfront and its impact on the neighborhood. The open spaces, vacant lots, wild dogs, rundown buildings, and the strong beautiful light became important elements in my work. I photographed almost every day, exploring the area with my neighbor and friend, Maureen McNeil. Over time, I began to collect portraits of the people who lived and worked there, architectural details, and landscapes of the waterfront and the streets. Now, 20-plus years later, these images have become an historical record of an area that has changed dramatically. Maureen McNeil and I published a book titled Red Hook Stories with her short stories about the neighborhood and my photographs. Here is a link to further information about that book. http://www.janetneuhauser.com/the-red-hook-archive
All images in this portfolio are scanned 35mm negatives printed on Canson Rag Phot
ographique 310 paper with archival inkjet inks. Prints are 14 x 9.5 inches on 17 x 14 inch paper in an edition of 25. All images are available for purchase from the photographer and from Kentler Gallery. Please inquire about editions and pricing. Vintage silver gelatin prints of certain images are available upon request.
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I photographed my daughter from birth until she moved away to go to college at age 18. At first the images were casual portraits, made when the moment arose. Gradually I realized that I was not photographing the events in her life such birthday parties, Christmas morning, baseball games. Instead I was drawn to emotional moments, when the light was inviting, when she was sick or sad or happy or moody. I also started early on to photograph her friends, and the children of friends in the same manner. Over the years I took hundreds of photographs of the kids that surrounded me with both color and black and white film. I titled these images Kid Pictures, an irreverent sort of title, of photographs that were not about the happy days of childhood but the less recorded parts, the more painful moments. I offer some of them here as a kind of tribute to the kids who so willingly showed me the other side of their lives and let me record them. The Kid Pictures have been shown over the years in many different forms and three of the images are in a public art collection that hangs in a 911 Center as an example of the kind of child that they are dedicated to helping. All of these images have now been printed digitally and are available in limited quantities. Please inquire.
The featured Image is of Jess in the Banner Forest on her birthday.
My Grandmother, who quit school after the sixth grade, was a remarkable photographer. She had an eye and she had the desire to take photographs, a need, despite hard times, no money, a stark life full of hard work, many children, and a loveless marriage. Yet she always had her camera. So I dedicate this blog to her, even though she was mostly unhappy, I know that photography made her happy. I imagine her on the farm, 75 miles from the nearest town, waiting for the mail to arrive with the newest roll of developed film with prints. It must have been one of those moments when everything else fell away, all the chores and work and stress while she looked at the images she had made months before. I know she felt joy at that moment. She once told me that there is always a picture to be made. The photograph below is of my father, out in the field with a chair. It is a perfect moment, his hand hovers above the horizon, his expression is serious, nothing else exists at that moment, just him and her, the chair, the empty horizon, the breeze, the smell of the grasses. She must have carried that good chair all the way out into the field, camera and boy in hand just to make this photograph and I have loved it for many years. It is the most important thing to make a photograph when the need makes itself known, when the recognition takes place.