I began working on Walks in North Park in 2014, I finished it slightly over a year later. The idea for the project came to me fully-formed on October 19, as I took an early morning walk in Kutztown-Pennsylvania’s North Park – a 115-acre parcel off of Krumsville Road. The project structure is simple: one day, each month for a year, I spent a few hours walking the park, using my camera as tool to mindfully engage the environment around me. Each month, I also wrote a short essay that related to aspects of that month’s session or sometimes more generally just some thoughts about that particular time of year. While I captured around 200-300 image on each outing, I edited that body down to around 20 pictures each month. Those select images and the accompanying essay for the month became a single volume in a twelve-book set. I designed and printed all twelve, then enlisted Emilie Haaf, a Kutztown University alumna and book-maker extraordinaire, to hand-bind each book and build a slip-case for the set.
Show more
While all the book images were photographed with a 21MP digital camera, the project also provided a context for me to become re-acquainted with large-format film photography. On several occasions, in addition to the digital camera, I made a number of exposures with a 5 x 7-inch view camera.
Slightly more than a year after the project’s inception, the work was presented in a solo exhibition at the Baum School of Art Gallery in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The show included all twelve books along with twelve selected framed images, one representing each month of the project. The exhibition also included a 38 x 53-inch print made from one of the 5 x 7-inch view camera negatives.
Show less
Walks in North Park Video Overview
Walks in North Park Book PDFs
