Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

href="https://dergreif-online.de/www/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/dyrholaey_2.jpg"> Hello, readers of Der Greif! It's a pleasure to be invited to share some ideas with you this week. It's suitable that my involvement with Der Greif was through their exhibition "A Process", because it's the idea of process - what goes on behind the scenes, and into the making of the work - that unites what I would like to share with you. Der Greif asked me to share some images from my series Polaris, which I photographed over the course of travels through Iceland (mostly on foot) and the Alaskan Arctic (mostly by bushplane) in the fall of 2013. I usually work intuitively, so engaged in the act of photographing that it borders a journey into the subconscious, and it can take months - sometimes years - before I can separate myself enough to truly understand what I have made. Although an artist statement may be written, and an edit of images selected, the meaning of a body of work evolves just as surely as experience fades into memory and the clarity of retrospect. "Let Fear Be Your Compass" was written in my sketchbook at the time I made Polaris. It was a quote from photographer Greg Miller, who had taught me to use a field camera that summer, after which I had somewhat haphazardly ordered my first ever 4x5 camera on eBay. Looking back at the photographs - serene and otherworldly as many of them are - it is strange to remember so many of these experiences as absolutely dominated by fear. Not the subtle, paralyzing, internal fears of failure or success that plague many artists, but a primal, physical fear of dying; of being destroyed by the wilderness I loved so much, which I aimed to capture. It was the first time I had truly felt threatened by the landscape, and I wonder now if perhaps it allowed me to temporarily evade the fears that really hinder art - the fear of not being good enough. In such intense situations, that fear becomes trivial. The instances are many: hanging out the window of a bush plane, Crown Graphic in hand, in encroaching fog that prevented us from landing to get more fuel. Facing the fury of an autumn gale alone in the Icelandic wilderness, for 60 kilometers with a 40-kilo pack. Falling on glaciers, falling in rivers, hitting my head on rocks. It was all a learning experience, and throughout most of my time in Iceland I was primarily concerned with staying alive, yet the camera was there. I hardly remember making the photographs, but I hold the negatives in my hands. The self-portrait above was taken on my last night in Iceland - I would return to the US in a wheelchair the next day. Self-portrait at Defeat, I titled it in my mind, having not yet seen the photographs. It is strange to look at this portrait now, its quietness and composure, while I remember feeling only panic, suspecting my leg to be fractured. Polaris was a learning experience, with its challenges falling somewhere between happenstance and accident. Although I learned some hard lessons in personal safety, it also taught me that intense experiences, with varying degrees of discomfort, can be helpful in distracting you for long enough to forget the internal fears that interfere with artmaking. The trick is to somehow do it safely. I know that many artists work, somehow, together in careful collaboration with fear. Photojournalists do this. Thomas Joshua Cooper does this (and if you haven't ever heard him speak, I highly recommend watching one or all of the video lectures available on the internet). You could be overwhelmed by terror, but then you see the photograph, and the world disappears. Something else takes over. The photograph gets made. "What is at stake here?" was a question we were often asked art school, a terrifying question that nevertheless remains wise to return to. What are you risking, in your equal chances of success and failure? Hopefully, not your life, but are you risking anything at all, in either process or result? I hope so. Without risk - without daring to make the photographs that matter - there can be, in my mind, no forward progress. The key is to find a way to transcend the fear that inhibits artmaking, whether your tactic be adrenaline or meditation or simply throwing caution to the wind. Everyone must find a way to overcome this. Sometimes, primal fear will do. The entire Polaris series can be found on my website.