When I post about my photo projects it all comes out nice and neat, one project following another, all neatly lined up and each progressing from milestone to milestone as if I have some spreadsheet charting each day’s goals and metrics to measure my progress. (I should, come to think of it, but I don’t.)
Of course, in the real world, it’s all a sort of a mess, one project moving forward today, another tomorrow, a change of mind about something fundamental the day after.
For my amusement (i.e. to help me figure out what exactly I am working on right now—I’m not sure I really know the full list) I thought I would highlight the projects underway, to give them a little light. They are in no certain order.
The Black and White Forest. This is a major project made over the past four years documenting the destruction of the Dome Fire, out in the Mojave Desert, near Baker, California. Currently, some of this work is on view at the Museum of Art and History (MOAH) in Lancaster, California, and will be there until December 29th. If you go check out the half-hour video of mine—almost all of the project images are there.
Honest John: Nuclear Weapons In America. An even bigger project than The Black and White Forest. Images of nuclear weapons on display throughout the United States, from military bases and museums to city parks, Army/Navy stores, and roadside rest stops to high schools and bars, these weapons are all around us. A solo exhibit with a selection of this work opens at the Nuclear Museum, in Albuquerque, New Mexico in late January next year.
Yosemite 95389. That’s the zip code for Yosemite Valley and that is the subject of this project, focusing on the physical infrastructure of the Valley amongst the iconic views. Photographed on an iPhone. I’m heading there again next week for what I hope to be the final shooting days of this project.
Portrait of Montara: Red Sky. I made these images on September 9th, 2020, when the sky above my small town was Mars red, the color caused by the smoke from fires to the north that a quirk in the wind had brought our way. I had been unsatisfied with the photographs until I discovered the new HDR stills technology, which made them what I wanted them to be all along.
Yellowstone. A spiritual companion project to Yosemite 95389, with park signage and other indications of the organization of the land and the pedantic nature (pun unintended, said without malice) of the Park Service’s management. Shot over a period of years, maybe I need to make one more trip?
Zooscapes. A few years ago I was thinking about subject matter that serious photographers generally didn’t photograph and I thought of zoos. Yes, yes, Elliot Erwitt, yes, Garry Winogrand, maybe even Sugimoto, if you count dioramas as sort of zoo-like, maybe a few others. A spiritual companion to my Owlscapes project.
Chaparral. I happen to live with a chaparral ecosystem at my doorstep and I’ve mused for many years how to make use of this fact to make a satisfying photo project. I made images that I liked but didn’t have quite the spark I was after—but then the new HDR technology came along and supplied the missing element (as it did for my Portrait of Montara: Red Sky project).
Genesis 310 Still Images. A companion project to my Genesis 310 videos, which I haven’t posted about and maybe never will. One of my kids expressed concern about the project (about its political ramifications) and so I have withheld them. I still need to finish the projects, though.
Random Frame. Videos made up of randomly ordered individual frames of the movies that were foundational in my youth. I’ve made a few but I have a few to go.
The airplane project. Airplanes in the sky above Montara, all of our telephone poles and wire and rooftops and all the rest framing the plane. Very much underway.
The ship project. A near mirror image of the airplane project, but with ships. Just starting out and I don’t really know what I’m doing with this. Subject to radical change. Like the airplane project, another portrait of Montara.
The Memory of Antietam. Images of the Civil War battlefield. I’ve been there many times starting in 2004 and I’ve made two distinct bodies of work, not to mention a book maquette (with book designer Bob Aufuldish). I need to finish all of this, perhaps visiting Maryland just one more time…
And there you have it. The projects that are underway. More are brewing but not yet being photographed, more still are just a fragment of an idea, floating around, maybe growing into something though probably not.