Photographic artists Friderike Heuer and Ken Hochfeld have been photographing the Columbia River Gorge for years, often during shared excursions, drawn to its unparalleled beauty. In contrast to many contemporary photographers who long to capture pristine and uninhabited landscapes, the views of yore, both feel that the way the land looks now deserves documentation of an equally tangible and emotional beauty.Hochfeld has photographed the river and the land in a traditional manner with an eye on what has remained constant and a nod to historical photography in the Gorge, but also with openness to the existence of human activity. Heuer bases her photomontages on decades of photographing the landscape of the Gorge, stressing the environmental and political impact of settler activity on tribal land. Both bodies of work were developed as a joint project, informed by intense love for the region and shared hopefulness that repair is at least partially underway.
We had it all planned. My friend had an exhibition of his latest work at Lightbox Gallery in Astoria. I was to come on a Monday when the gallery is closed to the public, so I could look at his photographs, safely away from potential sources of infection. Wouldn’t you know it, it did not work out, I was under the weather and the trip had to be canceled.
The work is back in Portland now, and this weekend I got a one-on-one presentation on Ken’s porch, safely outside and yet protected from the endless rain. It was the day before his birthday.
Cape Horn, WA
I want to talk a little bit about this photographer friend of mine and the way I believe he approaches his work. The lack of feedback when you are not a famous artist in the limelight can be anything from annoying to discouraging at times. We all should make more of an effort to share our reactions. So here are some observations, and some guesses.
Historic Columbia Highway at Rowena Crest
If you look at Ken’s website, one thing is immediately obvious: he is willing to take risks, over and over again, by exploring new methods and new subjects with a vengeance. That is not the norm in the world of photography. Most successful photographers have their shtick and stick to it – why fix something if it ain’t broken? It allows the viewers to instantly recognize your work, a marketing plus, among others. It allows you to refine your technique with a particular subject, it keeps you in a comfort zone.
In contrast, Ken’s path as a fine art photographer has been variable across the decades. He has tackled portraiture, color photography, both in spontaneous and in staged settings. His work interacts with our natural environment in a multitude of ways, from descriptive, documentary landscape photography, to capturing the mood or essence of a place, to using nature as a symbolic stand-in for more personal exploration, preferably in black&white, often in the sepia tone range, sometimes in collaboration with people who provide text.
Titles of series clockwise from upper left: Madrone Wall Expressions – Rock(s) – Landscape Americana – Unboxed – Whole – The Trees.
As someone myself who gets easily bored and also likes to stretch herself artistically as much as intellectually, I feel quite drawn to work that shares some of those characteristics. You never know what comes next, and so are kept on your toes, wondering about the newest project, both in terms of method and ideas.
I grew here-lump of stone, settled in my nest of sticks waiting for an Irish spring, waiting for a four-leaf clover to kiss me awake. (From the series Waiting, text by Gay Walker.)
The most recent work consist of diverse series. Ken captures the Columbia river with a nod to the history of photographers who came before us, with fresh eyes, nonetheless. Some of these images were created while he kayaked on the river in order to get vistas inaccessible from land. If you have ever held a camera or/and tried to paddle in those waters you know how daring an approach this is – yet the photographs are nothing but serene. Here is the artist statement:
“Pages: The Majestic Columbia River”
The Columbia River has been a popular subject for photographers since the early days of the medium over 150 years ago. Many wonderful photographs of the river are shown in galleries, museums and the pages of books highlighting the historical importance of the work itself while depicting the beauty of the Columbia River.
The photographs shown here are my own pages of some favorite scenes of this powerful and intensely beautiful resource we have in our backyard. I hope that with the exhibitions at LightBox today, we can celebrate the majesty of the Columbia River and recognize its significance while remembering it as an existential heritage of those who were here long before the first settlers arrived.
Horse Thief Lake, Columbia River Gorge, WA
For the other project, Small Communities of the Lower Columbia River, Ken spent several years photographing the people (some familiar, some met on the road, quite literally) and the landscape of a region resistant to change. Scandinavian fishermen, Chinese immigrants who worked in the canneries, farmers who tried to make a living, make for a hard working populous in a region prone to earthquakes, floods and fires.
“Small Communities of the Lower Columbia River”
There is a special character and history in the small communities found along the Lower Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. This work begins to examine the places and the people who live there.
The communities of the Lower Columbia on the Oregon side along Highway 30 west of Portland and on the Washington side near Highway 4 west of Longview were settled primarily by Swedes and Finns long before roads were built. They depended upon Columbia River tributaries and sloughs for access, so these developments became known as Riverboat Communities. When roads were built the riverboats became obsolete. While fishing and canning were once the primary source of commerce, the canneries are now of the past. Cattle and sheep are raised by many of the locals and fishing is still active. Most importantly the communities depend upon water management of the sloughs via dikes constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers and managed by hired locals to minimize pasture flooding, but flooding is still common during the wet season. In Brownsmead in particular, new construction is seldom seen because of the scarcity of available undeveloped higher ground, so changes to the area are rare and most of the locals like it that way.
Clatskanie River
Watermaster walks the Columbia River Dike near Brownsmead
I’ll skip over all the stuff relating to technique that I know nothing about in the first place, given that I still use a point&shoot camera on automatic mode, grateful if I manage to get what ever captures my attention in focus. Seems to me, though, that Ken’s images are flawless, when it comes to the way light was captured and space laid out.
Clockwise from upper left: Ed and Jan Johnson, Brownsmead – Scott Fraser, Midlands District – Ray and Denise Raihala, Brownsmead – and Brooklyn, NYC transplant Carol Newman, Brownsmead (community treasure, heart and soul – and brain! – of the local radio station KMUN/Astoria. I’m an ardent fan, in case you wondered, of her and the show hosted by her, Arts Live and Local.)
Instead, I want to try and express what much of Ken’s nature-based work seems to reflect for me. For lack of a better phrase, I think the images evoke a state of longing. I can’t quite put my finger on what is longed for: establishing a connection between photographer and viewer through successfully communicating what was seen?
From the series Rivers and Streams
Longing to freeze the moment in time when awareness of the beauty of our surround registers, once again, pretending we can make it last forever? Longing to prolong that state where we can focus on the cliffs, the woods, the meadows, the rivers, oblivious to pain or the daily demands on us, our worries and obligations, in blissful isolation? Or, in reverse, longing to belong, while out there all alone, forever wondering if people “get” what one is producing?
From the series Rock(s)
Longing to find a pictorial language that expresses oneself when words fail? Whatever it is, a feeling hovers above the surface of these photographs, or within them, that still believes in possibility – longing can be answered.
Bughole Road
Sometimes the longing is on the melancholy side, sometimes it captures joy about what’s seen, the deep desire to depict and share. Sometimes it is more attached to what is photographed, sometimes it seems more linked to the one doing the photographing. Wherever the scales tip, one thing is true for the work: it does not shy away from, or, really, it comfortably seeks and displays emotion. If I compare it to the traditional (and majority male) landscape photography that I know, that is special.
High Water on Wirkala Rd. Deep River, WA
Surprise me with what’s next down the road! No Dead End for you!
Music today of Finnish origins like many of the Brownsmead immigrants, related to light, appropriate for a passionate photographer.
