Getting back on track
Last year I decided to stick around the Olympic Peninsula for a while and mostly shun any international photo projects. The trip to Vietnam awakened an understanding that I had been missing. While traveling internationally on all previous trips, I did everything I could to get off the beaten path, the tourist traps. Vietnam took me deep into the Mekong delta to stay with a family in a village that sees perhaps 3 westerners year-round. Being so far off the tourist track, I saw the parallels between rural Vietnamese life and rural western life.
When I returned from Vietnam, I vowed to stay stateside until I better understood my vision. The beginning of my self-discovery began last winter and then was promptly derailed. Finding a balance between my work as a computer programmer with a major side of network security expertise and the creative world of photography and artistic vision is a huge struggle for me. I often feel two distinct personalities, each one developed and fully capable of succeeding with enough nurturing. Programming and security satisfy my monetary and professional needs, photography satisfies my philosophical and spiritual needs.
Finding a better balance recently, I’m getting back on track and have earnestly started working towards a new photo project.
The project is essentially contemporary art of the Makah. I’m hoping to open a window into the world of contemporary art of the Makah in order to challenge common stereotypes, educate my community and provide a “moment in time” of the Makah art tradition for the Makah Cultural Research Center. This project will be done primarily on black & white film using my Leica and a Mamiya RB67 medium format cameras.
Research for the project has led me down several fascinating roads. I recently finished “Voices of a Thousand People,” by Patrica Pierce Erikson, which details the history and “why” of the Makah Cultural Research Center. Voices has answered many questions and given me a good cultural platform to begin with. Just starting this project and nailing down a “what” was daunting as I didn’t want to make assumptions (which I initially did anyway) or be offensive. We “white” guys have a really bad tendency to box Native Americans into quaint little boxes that fit our preconceived ideas. Necessarily throwing away all previous notions left me with a blank slate, but with a blank slate there was no way I could define a project. The first step required feeling out a direction, and for that I turned to Dr. Jeff Mauger, an important anthropologist who worked with the Makah on the Ozette dig. Between Dr. Mauger and Voices, I was able to begin writing a new perception, one grounded in fact and cultural understanding.
Also, “Indian Artists at Work”, by Ulli Steltzer is a beautiful photo book that provides a visual insight into art and craft being performed in western Canada. Many of the photos detail the production of native art and the people who were making it in the 1970′s. “Indian Artists at Work,” also gave me several ideas on what to expect.
I’ve been in contact with Janine Bowechop of the MCRC and have received positive confirmation on the project. I’ve also had several discussions with Dr. Mauger and he’s been and invaluable resource.
This is going to be a long project, but I’m glad for that. I’m hoping that the span of time will allow me to reflect on each session and tweak my direction or vision so that a healthy body of work emerges at the end. Once this body of work emerges, I will share all of it with the MCRC and hope to have gallery presentations. Peninsula College will probably be available for showing and I’m trying to understand how the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center works for submissions. After that, who knows?