Out in Wheat
As I write this I am in Moscow, Idaho on a project to photograph wheat fields. Although I call this wheat fields much else is grown here besides wheat: garbanzo beans, alfalfa, lentils, safflower, etc. It is late October so this isn't a time of flowing golden wheat with a hot sun blazing down from above. The fields are stubble, turned under or lying fallow this time of year.
Why be here now? Because this is a time where the land itself has no covering to soften its contour. This is the much photographed area called the Palouse, where workshops meet, where vans criss cross the terrain filled with photographers looking for that iconic " shot", the one that's a keeper, the one that ends up over a mantle to wow the house guests at the party. And yes, in July or August at harvest time this is an exquisite place, but in late October? Not so much.
That's why I am here, to make essential photographs.
I've only been here a few days but working here now is proving challenging. "Dodging rain drops" is how I would describe it, although the fog at dawn this morning was something new.
I will make good pictures here, for the 18 or so times I've been here have me well prepared, perhaps better than anyone. I also will not be repetitive. The late time of year helps to insure that, of course, but also I am seeking to do some things here differently than before.
I am sure you have found this too but to be someplace familiar where you've made pictures before and to think through a different approach, to try something else, to challenge past assumptions seems key to me. Much has been written about how we always make the same pictures, over and over. This is all too easy, to be in front of something with similar light, similar content, and a similar frame of mind to something you photographed in the past with some success and then to repeat that same image. I am trying not to do that while here.
It would be rewarding sometime to assemble some of the pictures I have made while here that are not of the fields specifically, the outtakes, if you will (hint hint you curators out there). Honestly, how can you not make a picture of an oil tanker sized hay stack three times your height stranded in the middle of nowhere?
So stay with me for the next few posts as I take you through my trip out here in late October 2016. Next up? I flew yesterday with brilliant blue skies and bright sun at 10 am. The first day since getting here that it has been so. We used a Cessna 206, a four seater airplane, with the door removed. I was harnessed and strapped in, sitting in the seat right next to the large opening. It was 45 degrees. Totally worth it. This is me, still strapped in, after we landed.
How did I do, up there at 1000 feet skidding along at 90 knots, pointing down at this amazing landscape?
Stay tuned.
Related series
Wheat: An American Series
Currently out of print
In this beautiful book Rantoul has chosen some of the best photographs made over a 15 year period from the area of Washington State called “ The Palouse”. Using photographs made in the air and on the ground, the book has photographs made in the growing season in early summer and those made at harvest in early September.
Wheat 2014 Function
Artist Statement: Wheat
Neal Rantoul
I first started photographing in the Palouse area of southeastern Washington in the mid 90’s and have been back most years since. It is my longest running project.
The work has evolved over the years, going from first black and white to color, from large format to digital, and from being based on the ground to including pictures made from the air. I have also photographed the area through the seasons.
In earlier writing about the project I referenced some of the great contemporary landscape photographers such as Robert Adams and Joe Deal, who was a good friend, and also cited Eugene Atget for the single mindedness of his intent. As a career artist I work in many different genres but this is the one that is perhaps the core vehicle of expression for my landscape work. While it has been challenging to find new approaches to this most wonderful of places, it also has been a privilege. Looking back at so much work now, I see more subtle changes from the earlier days to the present for I believe some of the basic principles in working there still apply: it is a landscape almost without scale due to few trees and little to reference size, the pictures can convey the movement of the wheat in the breeze at the same time as show the stillness and static nature of the topography, allowing photographs that convey sharpness and blur due to movement in the same image simultaneously and finally, in the more recent work since about 2000, colors, on their own, but also in relationship to each other.
I am very excited by the newest aerial work from the summer of 2014, as it represents a shift in intention with an evolved sense of the fields' function and their form where the work is perhaps its most abstract. Some of this work references the place by including a barn, a farm machine or trees, while some does not. Hence: Function and Form, the title for the new work. Function and Form constitutes a subset, which is, I hope, a powerful one, of the overall work made over the two-week shoot.
Neal Rantoul
July 2014
Wheat 2014 Form
Artist Statement: Wheat
Neal Rantoul
I first started photographing in the Palouse area of southeastern Washington in the mid 90’s and have been back most years since. It is my longest running project.
The work has evolved over the years, going from first black and white to color, from large format to digital, and from being based on the ground to including pictures made from the air. I have also photographed the area through the seasons.
In earlier writing about the project I referenced some of the great contemporary landscape photographers such as Robert Adams and Joe Deal, who was a good friend, and also cited Eugene Atget for the single mindedness of his intent. As a career artist I work in many different genres but this is the one that is perhaps the core vehicle of expression for my landscape work. While it has been challenging to find new approaches to this most wonderful of places, it also has been a privilege. Looking back at so much work now, I see more subtle changes from the earlier days to the present for I believe some of the basic principles in working there still apply: it is a landscape almost without scale due to few trees and little to reference size, the pictures can convey the movement of the wheat in the breeze at the same time as show the stillness and static nature of the topography, allowing photographs that convey sharpness and blur due to movement in the same image simultaneously and finally, in the more recent work since about 2000, colors, on their own, but also in relationship to each other.
I am very excited by the newest work from the summer of 2014, as it represents a shift in intention with an evolved sense of the fields' function and their form where the work is perhaps its most abstract. Some of this work references the place by including a barn, a farm machine or trees, while some does not. Hence: Function and Form, the title for the new work. Function and Form constitutes a subset, which is, I hope, a powerful one, of the overall work made over the two-week shoot.
Neal Rantoul
July 2014
