blake gordon photography

pulling away from Hatch Workshop after final preparations

It’s been a long hot summer, although the more when you don’t use A/C and are working on a metal box in the middle of the day. But the good news is the trailer is ready for the road and we’ll be heading out West after PDN’s Outdoor Photo Expo and the Outdoor Retailer trade show at the beginning of August. A record hot summer in Texas should make the mountains all the more enjoyable. I hope they get rain while I’m away – though the extended forecast looks grim.

Ah, 2010. Goodbye. We spent a lot of time together working on somethings. I’m looking forward to 2011 and investing some more time and energy into a few personal projects that I’m excited about. I’m blessed to be surrounded by a wealth of friends who set a high bar with their personal work. I think with the abundance of images in the world it’s critical to have a sense of authorship as a photographer, or anyone adding to the cultural noise that is media. It reminds me of a quote I saw recently: “Beneath every good word is an even greater silence.” If you’re going to supplant the silence, it should be done with some craft/style/grace.

A few of the highlights:

-completing a 5 day continuous nightwalk through Austin
-collaborating with the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, MS on an exhibition
-SXSW
-covering the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
-producing a multi-media piece for the National Parks Conservation Association
-assisting Brent Humphreys with his development of the Ziddel House
-hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim for Boys’ Life magazine
-acquiring a 1948 Boles-Aero travel trailer which will be the foundation for a deployable hermitage/studio

Onward to 2011.

The last three weeks have been quiet for assignment work, but that’s been welcomed as I’ve been busy working on the 14′ travel trailer I purchased a few months ago. Though it is a very solid unit, it is a 60 year-old trailer and there is always plenty of work to do on a project like this.

My intent is to design a modular mobile production retreat. By that, I mean that the trailer is meant to be deployed to an isolated space for the purpose of producing work focused on a specific project. The personal projects I explore often focus on an environment and require a contemplative process to do so. Allowing that methodology I use in the field to play out in the production phase (which often demands a necessary amount of studio work) is important to retaining the authenticity of the work.

The trailer allows me to retool my relationship with my environment from one of balancing a number of relationships, responsibilities, and the daily grind to one of a singular focus on the work. This is important in order to explore the possibilities of the work more intensely. This facet of the process is embedded within field work, but so often gets lost upon return. The primacy of the field and lessons learned while in contact are central to much of my work.

There are a lot of loose ends on the trailer as it has been in use as a gutted utility trailer for some time. Nearly every single component of the trailer needs at least some kind of attention and over the past month I have:
-cleaned and painted the frame with industrial rust-proofing paint
-replaced the wiring
-cleaned, sealed, and reinstalled sub floor
-replaced electrical inlet
-repaired clearance lights
-new license plate frame and light
-new glass for door and windows(2)
-new exterior door handle
-polished interior skin of door
-installed reflective insulation
-cut, painted, installed interior walls of Homasote
-new aluminum trim at interior wall/door interface
-new stainless steel bolts to replace missing rivets at skin/frame connection

I’ve been working in the space as I’ve been designing/building it out to get a sense of what will work. The largest constraints are space/weight. There is a wide array of suppliers I’ve gone to with parts needs as nothing original is available. The layering of time is the most visible marker binding the trailer to its surroundings and I have no intent of making this appear “as new”. Thus, it is a slow process finding parts and materials that respect that layering but add to is functionality. All in all it’s been quite fun with much work still to do. I would like to take it out for a field test in the following weeks.

Sideview mirror near Deming, NM / traveling east along I-10

I recently arrived back in Austin after being on the road for 6 weeks initiated by a weeklong assignment in the Grand Canyon for Boys’ Life magazine.

I used the assignment as an opportunity to get back out West, spend some time in the mountains and view an old travel trailer in California I’ve been eyeing as the foundation of a project. I purchased the trailer after my assignment, attended the summer Outdoor Retailer convention in Salt Lake City, spent some time in Los Angeles, Flagstaff, and Carbondale, CO before heading back to Los Angeles to pickup Brent Humphrey’s prints of his Le Tour project from the Clark-Oshin gallery in West Hollywood.

Hauling the 1,400 mile drive between Los Angeles of the West Coast and Austin of the Texas Hill Country was my first professional transport gig bringing me one step closer to being the “long-haul trucker” I’ve been called by a friend.

Much of the route I traveled back Austin I’d either never driven or have driven through only at night. The expanse of earth between Willcox, AZ and Las Cruces, NM is simply stunning. I would say it was easily the best part of the drive, but the Big Bend region is quite lovely this time of year.

And so despite the fact that the distance (nearly 6,000mi) covered over the past 6 weeks was a bit more than anticipated (with the final 3,000 towing a 60 year old trailer) it’s a very promising step for the development of my work.