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Last Chance Canal, Grace, Idaho |
Last Chance is literally the last place farmers can take water from the Bear River to irrigate their crops. It could just as accurately be called First Chance because the river from Soda Springs, Idaho, is enclosed by lava on the west side and mountains on the east side making the point chosen for starting the canal system that snakes through Gem Valley the "first and last" place available for a canal.
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Inexorable is one of the words that come to mind when standing at waters edge at Rozel Bay on the Great Salt Lake. When there is no wind and the water appears calm, there is movement, inert things in the water, small drops of oil, bits of partially submerged sediment and the accumulated debris of brine shrimp become lines of movement that have no obvious source, no mover, no first cause thus is seems the lake’s energy is inexorable.
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West Rozel Bay, Great Salt Lake, Utah |
Abstrracts |
This movement is part of the draw, the pulls me back to the bay year after year, it will not be the same place, there is no second chance, tomorrow it will be different, a breeze will change the elevation because the lake is shallow; its surface will move subtly and a shift of even an inch will completely change visually the shoreline, it becomes a new place.
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There are moments when the lake is so quiet that it holds you, surrounds you with its emptiness and to interrupt even with a breath is blasphemy. It is difficult for the mind to stop and allow that caress to happen, we need our noise because it makes us meaningful.
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Spring Bay, Great Salt Lake, Utah |
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Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah
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A line of pelicans fly overhead and the movement of their wings create a soft whistle. From a unseen place the call of a single gull moves through the air traveling on a cushion of silence. That silence can’t be photographed, it cannot be painted. It is the one thing given by being there that must be experienced and remembered. A photograph can seem to be “quiet” but quiet is not visual it is sensual.
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The first time I saw this canal was with a friend and co-worker, Bert Jensen, who wanted me to get some pictures of the inverted siphons designed by engineers working with Jesse Knight on a very challenging task of getting water from Rock Creek to Blue Bench, a plateau just northeast of Duchesne, Utah. Just the goal of constructing the canal brought jobs to this poor eastern Utah farming community. It created its own lumber harvesting, transportation and milling jobs prior to actual construction. As the project took shape more jobs were created as men, horses and hand tools carved a path along the face of a cliff that followed the Duchesne River Valley. The challenges were many as teams dug away rock, filled in small ravines and constructed wooden cribs where fill was not feasible or even possible.
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Bud Lake, Uinta Mountains, Utah |
There are thousands of ponds in the Uinta Mountains east of Salt Lake City, Utah. One of those ponds is called Bud Lake, lake must have been a tongue-in-cheek designation because it is quite literally just a low spot that collects water and when the run off ends in early summer there is no creek into or out of the lake, it is very much just a depression where water accumulates and slowly evaporates through the summer months. Unlike Rozel Bay very little seems to change at Bud Lake. It has the growth cycle of lilies that brings us back through the summer and there are the wild flowers that have their own rotation through the short season of growth that the high uintas allow.
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The process of making a photograph is both mechanical and chemical. The final product is a visual document of where the photographer has been and on a very personal level it is a package of memories. I have made thousands of negatives and almost as many thousands of digital files which represent places that hold my interest and then when seen a second time rekindle memories of the place and people who were present when the image was made.
Art is the visual evidence of inner emotions. To be an “Artist” requires a connection to being human, a curiosity about the meaning of being human and a desire to touch the soul of our humanity. A photograph is the most literal of all the visual arts and at the same time just as abstract because it is a captured moment that is a representational step away from “real”. We can go back to the same place, stand in the same spot and see what the camera captured on film or the censor but it is never the same, the image will always be something else, it will be the evidence of the artists emotions or interest or intent or curiosity. It will be the statement.
Computers have not made the photographic process easier, if anything it has become more difficult as the options for “statement” have increased tremendously with digital imaging tools like Photoshop. Even twenty five year old negatives are re-visualized as new methods of interpretation are made possible through the digital manipulation of data. It is indeed a whole new ball game.
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