Cellar Door, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

Ferry Wake, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

Staten Island Ferry Riders, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

Elephant Woman, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

Mike from Chelsea, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

Jonathan Buttall as a Hipster, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

SHOUT SHOUT SHOUT, 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

View from the National Mall 6/2007 from the series I’m Not Really Sure But It Must Mean Something

I like Dave Anderson’s photographs. A lot. His portfolio from Vidor, TX entitled ROUGH BEAUTY portrays a sense of the heroic and tragic and the assimilation of life and death and landscape in a beautifully lush, poetic way through a sensitive exploration of place and people that yields revelation yet never gives too much away.

All of my life I’ve been sneaking into places I don’t belong. As a child I’d dive into the furthest reaches of the family attic to see what ancient items had been passed down and then forgotten…There is so much beauty in the overlooked details of our world. I love the spare grace of decay and the splendor of the mundane. Caught moments with those I know well and discovered moments with those new to me all offer such magic and delight. And with all of these interests, there’s nothing that fascinates me more than that odd juxtaposition of beauty and isolation that seems ever-present in the landscape and our lives. -Dave Anderson

I wanted to share this work for two reasons- first, I recently met Dave and he has proven to be friendly and open and has provided some much needed encouragement, and second, after discussing the big scary global issues depicted in simon norfolk’s photographs of the militaristic sublime i thought it apropos to share some sort of antithesis- a body of work that addresses the human condition and society in a much different way. I happen to believe that if more people were as sensitive as Anderson to the beauty that surrounds us then perhaps Norfolk would have fewer battlefields to photograph.

For more, go to Anderson’s website, DBAnderson.com, or listen to a nice interview here on NPR.

there is perhaps no other greater influence in my photography than SIMON NORFOLK. i met him at a workshop in bath, england in 1999 and besides being one of the most intense personalities ive encountered he was gracious and informative and genuinely interested in helping the attendees become better photographers. a few years later i had an extended layover in london while traveling back to the states from uganda, where i had just finished a few weeks work on a dairy farm in the luweero triangle, and i met simon for coffee. since that time we’ve sporatically kept in touch, and his career has catapulted and rightfully so- there are few photographers who are able to translate such sensitive societal issues such as war and genocide through a global perspective and into compelling, contemplative, beautifully rendered images. i doubt i could even get a email reply from him now, but in lew of this you and i can vicariously experience a conversation with simon via lensculture, where theres a nice interview available for download. go check it out HERE. but maybe before that you should go to BLDGBLOG and read a great interview by Geoff Manaugh. While most artwork suffers when artists speak about who/what for/why, simon does nothing but inform his work by speaking about it and in turn deepens the context and content.

My favorite part of the interview is this-

NORFOLK: Well, I cannot fucking believe that I go into an art gallery and people want to piss their lives away not talking about what’s going on in the world. Have they not switched on their TV and seen what’s going on out there? They have nothing to say about that? They’d rather look at pictures of their girlfriend’s bottom, or at their top ten favorite arseholes? Switch on the fucking telly and see what’s going on in our world – particularly these last five years. If you’ve got nothing to say about that, then I wonder what the fucking hell you’re doing.

The idea of producing work which is only of interest to a couple of thousand people who have got art history degrees… The point of the world is to change it, and you can’t change it if you’re just talking about Roland Barthes or structuralist-semiotic gobbledygook that only a few thousand people can understand, let alone argue about.

and here is one of my favorite pictures by simon, the ash pond at auschwitz-