Sunday afternoon photographs

near Glenwood, Iowa

near Henderson, Iowa

Wales, Iowa

Also visited: Mineola, Macedonia, Elliott and Red Oak.

After the flood

Today was gray and wet, thick with clouds and a cold wind from the north. It seemed the perfect day to spend some time exploring what was left behind when the Missouri River subsided after three months of record flooding. I found gravel roads turned into little more than thick, gray mud and abandoned homes littered with no trespassing signs. The landscape in the floodplain west of Crescent, Iowa is a bit eerie to drive through, especially in dreary weather like this. Everything is dead, whether from the long winter or the brackish sludge left behind by the retreating water.

Unfortunately, the light mist slowly became a steady rain and cut my afternoon short before too long.

The State of the Artist: 2012

Now that 2012 has begun, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit about my photographic pursuits and what I have planned for the near future. I now find myself nearing the completion of my bachelor's degree and, with it, the completion of another chapter of my life. What follows are a few plans and insights about my place in this crazy world, camera in hand..

This May marks five years since I first set out to photograph Nebraska for what would become ninety-three. I've developed three goals for the series, one of which I achieved with my first exhibition at Hot Shops in 2010. Next is the publication of all 93 photographs as a photo book. I received the first copy of the book this week and will be finalizing all the little details in the next month or so.

Photo books have been a big influence for me as a photographer. I started with Robert Frank's The Americans and moved from there, finding tremendous amounts of inspiration from image after image displayed in this very intimate artform. Paging through my first attempt, I felt an immense pride in the work, a feeling that I had in many ways lost after sifting through the photographs for so many years. I'm very excited for others to get a chance to see the whole series in this format.

My South Omaha photographs will be titled The Magic City, a nickname that the city earned in the 19th century due to its remarkable rise in population almost overnight. While I'm not sure the project is too near completion at this point, I will be showing many of the images at the Hot Shops Art Center in a small two person show with my friend and photographer William Hess. Our photographs will be on display throughout May with an opening at the Hot Shops' Spring Open House on May 5th and 6th.

The Magic City is similar in a lot of ways to my prior work, a collection of details and random color photographs taken throughout South Omaha. I do feel, however, that the work is different in other ways from what I've done before, building on that foundation and expanding further. This growth is what keeps me growing and coming back to the camera again and again.

The future is still very much in the air. I'm researching a few large projects and hope to have something settled on in the coming months. As I've found before, the best laid plans often are the least productive while the results of happenstance are far more successful. I look forward to stumbling into another subject that consumes me as much as ninety-three has.

For the time being, I'll keep taking other photographs that will be published on my Flickr page, so check back often.

Thank you for your support.