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Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado River

 

I'm pleased to announce the upcoming release of a new collaborative book titled Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado. More information about the publication is here.

Some background: thirty years ago I was a young college student when I first read an article about the theoretical effects of global climate change. Back then it was an abstract off-in-the-future concept. About the same time I saw examples of rephotography by Mark Klett and others and thought that was a compelling way to investigate and visualize the past and the ever-changing present. I chose to become a photographer.

Fast forward three decades and what was once abstract is now visible and present in every corner of the world, including Glen Canyon/Lake Powell - a place that is challenging, complex, sublime, and somber.

I’m grateful to have worked on this book with long time collaborators Rebecca Solnit and Mark Klett (our second project together and our first with designer David Chickey of Radius Books - with special thanks to Michael Brune, Executive Director of the Sierra Club, for his introduction). Even though there are only two rephotographs in the whole of the book, it’s probably the closest (yet) to realizing what I hoped I might do when I chose to walk a path.

Byron

 

Vanished in Chico through December 15

There are less than two weeks left to visit Vanished: A Chronicle of Loss and Discovery Across Half a Million Years at the Chico State campus. Vanished is an investigation of four lost icons that persist as powerful ideas. These icons include a mammoth, a man, a tree, and a volcano. A collaboration between myself (project director, photographer), Heather Altfeld (writer), Oliver Hutton (graphic designer), Troy Jollimore (philosopher, poet), Sheri Simons (sculptor), and Rachel Teasdale (volcanologist), we explore how to assemble a world of fact, fiction, and myth. The results are a collection of interconnected words, images, and objects. This is the most recent iteration of a seven year effort. It's an expansive exhibition in four different venues that includes a wide range of objects, images, and installations (for example, you'll find six different book publications including one that is eight feet wide!). 

For more information about the show and the collaborators, please link here.

Byron

Phantom Skies and Shifting Ground: Eadweard Muybridge

 It's been a long time coming (twelve years!) but the book Scott Brady and I have been working on is finally done. It's called Phantom Skies and Shifting Ground: Landscape, Culture, and Rephotography in Eadweard Muybridge's Illustrations of Central America. It's co-publication between Temple University Press and Radius Books and is now available for purchase: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2415_reg.html

Radius books did a beautiful job designing the book and it even includes a small portfolio of separately bound Muybridge photographs in the front section.

In related news, Places Journal, a wonderful site for scholarship on architecture, landscape, and urbanism published an abridged version of my essay from the book. It can be found here: https://placesjournal.org/article/eadweard-muybridges-secret-cloud-collection/ 

And if you want to get a sense of the entire scope of the project, including animations about Muybridge and the wacky things he did with clouds, visit Phantomskies.com, a companion web site I made with Temple University Press. It's an experiment in open source publication that allowed me to show some more kinetic versions of creative work from the project.

Byron

A talk at the Wagner Free Institute of Science

Daniel Seth Kraus (a former graduate student) and I received Temple-Wagner Research Fellowships at The Wagner Free Institute of Science in Philadelphia. We've been investigating two mysterious and very small microscopic slides made in the mid-1850s. They're exactly what they sound like: tiny pictures that are on 1" x 3" glass slides that are so small they can't be seen with the naked eye and require a microscope for viewing. The actual image would fit into the center of this "o".

The slides were made by the Langenheim Brothers, two early and important Philadelphia photographers (they made the first panorama of Niagara Falls, the first photographs of an eclipse, and they invented the process used to make lantern slides). We'll be making a brief 10 minute presentation of our findings along with seven other fellows on Thursday, September 28, from 6 - 8 PM. We did more than figure out what's in the pictures, but you'll have to attend to learn about our discoveries. It's free, but to reserve a spot and to read more about it, jump here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-perspectives-on-historic-collections-tickets-36838667446

Byron

Exhibition opening in San Luis Obispo, CA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm pleased to announce the opening of a collaborative exhibition titled Vanished: A Chronicle of Loss and Discovery Across Half a Million Years at the Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, California.

It opens on Thursday, January 19, and will run until February 16. Here's the show postcard:  Download Vanished Postcard 5 x 7

Opening Reception and artist panel:

January 19 • 12pm, student reception January 19 • 4–7pm, panel at 5:30pm

It's a project I've been working on since 2009 with Heather Altfeld, Oliver Hutton, Troy Jollimore, Sheri Simons, and Rachel Teasdale. We been investigating four vanished icons including Chico's famous Hooker Oak, Ishi - "the last Yahi", a mammoth's molar, and a disappeared stratus volcano. They're all things that are gone, but are connected in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways. 

Their connections, and the dimensions of space and time are explored through the things we've made, including poems, essays, photographs, sculptures, and books. Here are some highlights of the physical parameters of the show.

Heaviest object: a giant hand made book (about 60 pounds) about the Hooker Oak. When open it is over seven feet wide - so big that it required a custom viewing table.

Tallest object: Cross section drawings of a mammoth's skeleton (15 feet high!) drawn with charcoal from a burned remnant of the Hooker Oak.

Smallest object: A picture of a little girl in front of the Hooker Oak in 1900  that's so small it requires a magnifying glass to view.

Most whimsical: A tiny book of collected drawings from people who had never seen a mammoth's tooth, but drew one anyway. Many of the drawings have been transformed into actual physical objects!

Most surprising: 1.3 million year old ungulate fossils found while looking for more of the lost mammoth!

Oldest: Ishi, photographed in 1914, standing on 15 million year old basalt in Deer Creek Canyon. The rock is still there.

Biggest calculated number: A book that depicts 48 million individual acorns - the estimated number produced by the Hooker Oak during it's lifetime.

If you're in the area and have a chance to stop in and see the show, I hope you will. This is the first of what I hope will be many exhibitions of the work that is ongoing. The next show is scheduled for October 2017 in Chico.

Byron