In the summer of 1981, a friend lent me an army surplus 4 x 5 view camera – a Speed Graphic. Some twenty years later, he wrote from Oslo, Norway, asking if I still had it and if so, would I return it. I did, with thanks and sadness. A year later another Speed Graphic appeared as a gift from the estate of another friend – such fine and simple cameras, such fine and rich gifts.
A 4 x 5 negative is capable of rendering detail from your toes to infinity. Bringing that capacity to a documentary project in northwest North Dakota initiated a way of seeing and working with a distinctive landscape that I have employed ever since.
Over the years, I have worked on many projects that were driven by specific subjects – an oil boom, cemetery folk art, ethnic log structures, a government canal system, Icelandic ancestral landscapes. The disparity of these topics has partially clouded my photographic vision and its constituent parts. Yet, these interests appear in all of my work, surfacing with an emphasis in one area or another – be it deep space, marks on the earth’s surface, artifacts, or the sense of a particular place.
North Dakota
In the summer of 1981, a friend lent me an army surplus 4 x 5 view camera – a Speed Graphic. Some twenty years later, he wrote from Oslo, Norway, asking if I still had it and if so, would I return it. I did, with thanks and sadness. A year later another Speed Graphic appeared as a gift from the estate of another friend – such fine and simple cameras, such fine and rich gifts.
A 4 x 5 negative is capable of rendering detail from your toes to infinity. Bringing that capacity to a documentary project in northwest North Dakota initiated a way of seeing and working with a distinctive landscape that I have employed ever since.
Over the years, I have worked on many projects that were driven by specific subjects – an oil boom, cemetery folk art, ethnic log structures, a government canal system, Icelandic ancestral landscapes. The disparity of these topics has partially clouded my photographic vision and its constituent parts. Yet, these interests appear in all of my work, surfacing with an emphasis in one area or another – be it deep space, marks on the earth’s surface, artifacts, or the sense of a particular place.
Wayne Gudmundson