Three years ago, I drove to the Lava Beds National Monument in Northern California to rephotograph an Eadweard Muybridge landscape. I should not say I drove because I was driven both then and now. Three years ago I left my black hoody way up a hill where we decided to rephotograph. You can read about it all in my blog post from 2016: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/in-search-of-eadweard-muybridge/ What happens in that post is essential to understand the following.
Lave Beds National Monument. A quiet out of the way place.
Last week we returned to the Lava Beds to see if perhaps the hoody sweatshirt might still be there. We were convinced that the hoody either could not have survived the elements or someone found it soon after we left. I wondered. I hoped that someone was walking around wearing it everywhere like I did. But who would hike up through those tick infested grasses just to rephotograph an obscure Eadweard Muybridge or to find an old black hoody?
The hill is steeper than it looks. Our day last week was bright and sunny. A slight breeze blew. So different from that hot day almost exactly three years ago. Now as then no one was about and last week there was a chill in the air. We parked below the hill and started to climb up and up and up. We spread out to see if we could find the exact place where I sat on the sweatshirt on that hot day. Bruce ahead of me, searching with his impeccable memory, closed in on the location all buried in grasses. And just like that, there be the sweatshirt! I said to Bruce, “Promise me not to touch anything before I photograph it.” He yelled for me to hurry. I took two iphone photographs, then sat down on the hill and we rephotographed the rephotograph this time with 4 x 5 inch color negative film in the pinhole camera. Those images have been sent off to the lab to be developed so I cannot post them yet. But if they are successful, the Lava Bed saga will continue.
We will keep our fingers crossed that the new images were correctly exposed. The featured image is from the old blog post three years ago of the sweatshirt left on the hill photographed with the iphone; binoculars attached to make the image with a telephoto lens. Am I obsessed? Probably. I love all the levels present in this saga. Some of them are: how something human-made lasts too long a time and does not decay, how this place is so remote and so quiet and so richly beautiful and so ignored, how the landscape has changed since the Modoc hunted there, since Muybridge photographed there and in the last three years. since we were last there. Thanks for reading part two of the saga. Stay tuned for the rephotograph.
PS: Visit Georgetown Records on Vale Street in the heart of Georgetown. They sell quality sweatshirts and lots of vinyl too!
As found among the grasses.The logo right after removal.What is happiness?Grasses, weather or rodents?Back home
I am so happy to have received a month-long fellowship from the Civita Institute to go to Italy for a month to make pinhole photographs. The Civita Institute is based in Seattle and gives three fellowships a year to all types of people. Here is a quote from their website:
Fellowships are open to architects, planners, designers, artists, writers and other arts professionals practicing in all states west of the Rocky Mountains, including Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. They provide an unparalleled opportunity for the recipients to undertake a project of their own choosing related to current or anticipated professional work, in a highly unique setting, far from routine obligations.
I will go to Civita in November and do long exposure pinhole photography with color negative film in a big camera and on paper in recycled tins. These tins/cameras will expose for the entire month I am there. The landscapes on film will be 30 to 45 minute exposures. Civita is an ancient Etruscan town teetering on a hilltop with no cars and a small year round population. I love the last line of the Institute’s statement where is says I will be in a highly unique setting far from routine obligations. I am so interested to see if I can capture a both the history and the present in one long exposure. Below are three views of the town. In the meantime, I have a lot to think about and many questions to be answered…..The featured image is from when I was in Italy for seven weeks in 1998. A photograph on film of a Via Cava: an old Etruscan road dug deep into the tuffa rock. This one near Sovana. It was taken as a vertical, cropped for this blog. I hope to explore more of these roads in the countryside when I am there. You an see more of my Italy work from the earlier trip here: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/italy/
With the exception of the featured image which is mine, the Civita images in this blog are from the internet.
I am posting this about the book called Innards: Pinhole Landscapes which has just been published. It is a 12 x 12 inch book and comes in a beautiful boxed set with a print of your choice included. You can buy it directly from me, cost is $300.00 with a $10.00 postage and handling fee and Washington state sales tax. If you are interested, please contact me, and we can set up a way to pay, either through Pay Pal, my website or a good old fashioned check via snail mail. Then I will mail you the book, in it’s box with the print. There are 24 images in the book that you can choose from any one of them for the print. You can go to http://www.blurb.com/b/9325749-innards to preview it but please DO NOT buy it on that website. It is only available from me. There was also a post on Daniel Milnor’s blog Shifter about the book; here is the link for that: http://shifter.media/creative-innards-janet-neuhauser/
The featured image is the cover of the book. You can look at the images on this website or at blurb.com to see the images inside. Or you can go to the front page of this website and click under Portfolios on Innards to see some of the images included in the book. Now that there is a shop set up on this website you can buy it directly from that.
Recently I spent about 24 hours with my brother Steve, scanning my father’s old slides of our childhood and some slides of Steve’s from the 1970s. I was reminded again, at how lucky I am to have had a father who was into photography and so innately good at it. It must have rubbed off on me somehow. Many of the slides had started to decay, but most were fine. I discovered that I loved the old messed up slides, the ones that had started to decay showed such depth and beauty. The history of my early childhood is here. Dad shot slides when he wanted color images and black and white film all the rest of time. Slides were special and I remember him saying how important it was to get the exposure right on and how important it was to make a good photograph. When I think about how strapped for money our family was, the money spent on photography had priority and the folks believed that it was important not to worry about spending on it. I decided to publish many of these images just so my viewers could see the amazing color that is still in there after all these years and so that they could see another side of my father’s photographic history. I have written about his dedication to photography before and that dedication shows through here as well. More images to come in the near future. You can look at some other blog posts here: http://www.janetneuhauser.com/for-dad-and-his-love-of-photography/ and here http://www.janetneuhauser.com/ode-to-mom-and-dad-and-their-love-of-photography/
Bertha and Reuben: Neuhauser grandparentsUncle Bob (Dad’s brother) with tractor in South Dakota.
Our old boat: five children and two adults!
Grandpa Neuhauser in South Dakota.
Family shot: Carol, Dan, Mary, Mom. Steve and I in front row.
Mom at the fireplace Dad had just built. With a couple cats I think. Slide damage!
As director of the Pinhole Project, I am always looking for new ideas and new cameras with which to make pinhole images for both me and the participants. Recently, in the past year or so, I have been using two cameras for myself again and again: a three hole metal can that is a former Dewar’s Scotch container and a smaller squarish can that is a bit bigger than the Altoid tins but has only one hole. I have been working on two series of images with these cameras: the Getaways are images that I expose from a car or truck during a road trip. I have made several of these; and love the way they record the sun trails. The Home series which I have made with the three hole can, are images made within my studio and just outside of it, usually exposed for at least six weeks and they record in triplet a myriad of things both inside and outside the studio. I have also used a smaller tin and a round tin for these images. A friend gave me a Solarcan and I made one with that as well. Since pinhole photography has become something of an obsession with me, I generally have two or three cameras exposing at one time. When I tire of the look or run out of ideas I will try something different. In the meantime, I present some of the images to you, first the Getaways and then the Home series.
The Getaways: All were made from a moving vehicle with the pinhole camera attached either outside the car or on a window facing out. Exposures are usually about 2 weeks. The titles are as follows (top to bottom): To Doe Bay and Back, Oregon Road Trip, To Northern Idaho and Back, To the Grand Tetons and Back, Top of the World, The Sunny Arms from the Parking Lot, Near Seiku, The featured image was made on a road trip to Oregon with the camera on the front hood of the car facing b
Home Series with the 3 hole camera: First two are of the windows in my studio. The next two are from the front windows looking out. The blue image was made with a Solarcan pinhole camera exposed for three weeks. The next image is of the curtains and the window sill made with a regular one hole camera and the last image is with a round can inside the screen doors entering the studio.
There are many more. These are just the most recent. Thanks for looking and if you would like to be a part of the Pinhole Project, go to The Pinhole Project website and send me an email to join.
As most of you know I was a high school photography teacher for 24 years. I loved the job, working everyday with young people who were intrigued by and creative with photography. Teaching them was fun. I have now retired from that job. I hate that word retired. It sounds as if I am off to bed to do nothing for the remainder of the days I have left. For me retirement is not about that. I developed a good work ethic over the years as a high school teacher which continues to pay off now: I get up and drink coffee with my work. I honestly do not know how I had time do the high school job. I spent at least 60 hours a week working including with the commute (which involved a 30 minute ferry ride). On top of that I tended to my studio and did what I could with my personal work. I had shows and grants and sold photographs but it was “on the side.” Now it is all about simply producing for the pure joy of it.
So what am I doing right now? The Pinhole Landscapes of course. The Innards Portfolio as I have come to call those images. I am also working on a cookbook of my Mother’s recipes, the DSLR images I randomly take, the Pinhole Project, and two personal pinhole projects called Getaways and Home (a future post is in the works) and I of course am updating my two websites and applying for grants. The Pinhole Landscapes involve a lot of post-processing: the negatives are very dusty and the color is off. Sometimes I reverse them horizontally. Sometimes I change things in photoshop: the aspect ratio, the background among other things. I want these images to knock me for a loop, just like the darkroom has in the past. I refuse to be judgmental about post-processing decisions.
I just spent 17 days in November in New York City photographing the archive of my dear deceased mentor from graduate school, Judy Seigel. Many things amaze me about her work. She produced a huge, incredible body of images from the about the time I met her (in the early 1980s) until about 2015. Her work ethic was so strong. She was not always easy to be around. She asked me hard questions and got impatient when I did not have an answer. Yet I learned so much from her and I have continued to learn from her looking at her images while I photographed them. She produced a strong and unappreciated, odd body of work. She had an unique vision. She was experimental and fearless. She thought a regular silver print without any “post factory manipulations” was boring. Her work inspires me to go into the darkroom with the Innards Portfolio. They are film negatives after all. I have an idea to transform these images and make them both about process and the image. I will let you know how that works. Meanwhile, the studio is glorious, depressing, exhilarating, Some days I do not go out: I mean I do not go outside at all. Forgive me if I have canceled a date with you. But now that I have the gift of time, I am using it.
In the past I eschewed the DSLR. But in fact I am shooting with it now and again, especially when I am on a road trip. Here are some photographs with the DSLR from my recent trip to the Grand Tetons. I did shoot a lot with the pinhole camera as well, and I took along a telephoto lens (a rarity for me) for the DSLR. I used it to make studies for the pinholes. Maybe you will see some sort of relationship between the two types of shooting. Maybe not Let me know. You can see two of the trip’s pinholes in the More Innards post. Another post on them later.
To the Grand Tetons and Back, 2018
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These images are but a few of the 500 or so that I made with the DSLR. It will take some time to sort them out. The images above have popped out as favorites. The featured image is from inside a cabin near Jackson Lake with the Grand Tetons in the background.
