I am pleased and honored to announce that several of my photographs in a series titled "A Journey West" which were taken in New Mexico from the window of my cabin on the train, have been chosen by a prominent collector of Southern artists. The Jackson Mississippi Law firm of Butler Snow has a distinguished history of collecting regional artists as well as others, and I now join Dusti in their collection.
The photographs are going to their New Mexico offices appropriately enough. This series along with "North by Train" the nascent series of iPhone photos, and subsequently the series "Acela Express" (northbound from New York City to Providence in a full blizzard) represent an entirely accidental experiment of mine. In the mid state Illinois farmland in January of 2013 I idly gazed out the window of my cabin, enchanted by the stark beauty of the lacy lignum of barren trees and the brittle dry grasses along the tracks as we sped along at 70 miles an hour. As a casual fascination grew in importance I decided I'd like a document to remember these fleeting, blurry, and stark vistas I was passing and forever loosing behind me. My initial approach was to use my iPhone and angle it looking ahead along the train. This provided less than interesting results. Soon I was holding the phone directly against the glass, finger poised to make the exposure while I previewed upcoming views by looking ahead. The combination of the photographer's eye seeking interesting things ahead, and the instantaneous and almost accidental event of the exposure taking place at 70mph began to show promising results. The images though greatly accidental in quality, do have some of the photographer's judgment as to what to shoot, and the accidental gives the images a naïve, primitive and almost folkloric quality. Of course working this way also produces scores of less than interesting images, however with practice I found I attained some measure of control as my forward looking eye combined with greater nimbleness of finger allowed me to capture what I previewed as it passed quickly through the camera's field of view. You will all judge whether these images speak to you or not.
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Paul BongéSon of Lyle, grandson of Dusti, photographer, potter, raconteur, gourmand. Archives
September 2015
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