Books |
Looking for the Summer
Jim Brandenburg
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Art and Photography
Looking for the Summer
Jim Brandenburg
The last time I was in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, a great wind blew and knocked down millions of trees. Hundreds of thousands of acres were, in a matter of minutes, turned from forest into flatland. I witnessed the damage, but as it was basically abstract for me — can you picture ten million trees strewn across the landscape? — I never quite grasped the magnitude of the loss.
Jim Brandenburg did. He probably was acquainted with more of those trees than anyone living in Northern Minnesota, having lived among them — and photographed them — for most of his life. Those trees had featured prominently in ‘Chased by the Light,’ his bestselling book of photographs. Now they were gone. He felt ‘humbled’ and ‘depressed.’
And then he found wisdom. The storm reminded him that nature isn’t an object to be owned and shaped by humans. Nature doesn’t care what we think. It just is. And it is not available to our judgment or opinion. But we can see — if we detach ourselves from our personal circumstances — how there might be growth in distaster. That wind created clearings: opportunities for fresh forests, natural fire lanes, unforseen views. He quotes Zen: ‘Barn’s burned down….now I can see the moon.’
Thus fortified, he set out to make a new book of photographs, this time of nature’s richest season. His plan: print one picture per day. 94 pictures, followed by brief stories about each one.
It is the rare artist who writes and photographs equally well. Brandenburg’s genius is skewed toward his pictures. For one thing, he goes deeper into the woods than Sunday hikers like me, and so brings back images we can only imagine: a butterfly in a virgin field, mushrooms perched like ballerinas, clouds and animals and plants seen only by one human and his camera.
These pictures refresh the spirit of nature lovers during the long cold winter. For duffers like me, they are souvenirs of meaningful trips. For the city dwellers and the landlocked, they are reminders of a force so powerful the best we can hope for is to bear witness. And for anyone who just likes a book of pretty pictures on a coffee table, here’s one you won’t see in every house on the block.
To buy ‘Looking for the Summer’ from Amazon.com., click here.
To buy an art poster by Jim Brandenburg, click here.
