Musing April 2012
Returning Home
Who says you can’t go home again? I think you can, if you are willing to recognize and accept the changes that have taken place in both yourself and your old home. I returned to my hometown, Decatur (AL), for a ten-day photo trip in January of this year. I made a conscious choice to approach Decatur, not as the place I grew up, but as a new location for me to explore visually. I have returned many times over the years to visit my family but never with serious photographic intent. This time I went alone, without my own family, charging myself with two tasks: explore Decatur with fresh eyes and make portraits of the people I knew.
Over the week I had portrait sessions with ten people, including both an old friend and a teacher from my high school days as well as family and family friends. I shot over 100 sheets of film and got to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in years. The rest of the time I photographed in many of the old buildings in the downtown area. Due to the building of a new fine arts center these buildings are undergoing a revival. I worked in an old hotel, train station, rooming house and cotton storage warehouse. Conditions of the buildings varied (much like in North Dakota) but the light was wonderful! My sister and her daughter modeled for me in some of the buildings and my brother worked with me in others. It was a wonderful experience and a great way to begin to work on a, for me, new style of portraits.
I also spent two days in Birmingham photographing in the Sloss Furnace National Historic site for a couple of days. For almost 90 years this factory produced pig iron for the Birmingham steel industry and is located in the middle of downtown. It is a great location for a photographer wanting to explore 20th century industrial architecture. It was like returning to Boston and the Chestnut Hill Reservoir Pumping Stations where I photographed twenty years ago. The machinery was grand and again, the light was wonderful.
Back in Decatur I went out to the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge and photographed along the Atkenson Trail and the Beaver Dam Swamp boardwalk. One borders a small cypress swamp and the other a Water Tupelo Swamp. I never knew these places existed when I was growing up so it was interesting to explore this area with fresh eyes.
As I got more and more excited by the locations I was photographing I kept thinking, “Wouldn’t this be a great place to run a workshop?” My wife agreed and so I began making the arrangements. Mark your calendar for January 20 – 25, 2013 and join me to explore some of the architecture, industrial sites and swamps of Decatur and Birmingham Alabama. Information will be on the website in the coming months.
It was a great trip. It was a challenging trip. Portraits are not my specialty but having family and friends allow me to practice my skills on them was a terrific gift. As a visual artist it was wonderful to rediscover the place I grew up, reacquaint myself with the people and places of my past and discover some new ones. You can go home again. Just be sure to bring your camera and an open heart.