Joshua Lutz
by 
|
Meadowlands, a monograph by New York photographer, Joshua Lutz, is a collection of photos taken of an area of 32-square-miles between New York City and New Jersey. It’s an area that most New Yorkers have never heard of yet alone taken the time to visit. This project — ten years in the making — includes an introduction by Robert Sullivan, who describes life in the Meadowlands as being ‘more resilient than regular life’. The colours and subject matter are rather subdued and quiet, but I find the images creep into my mind when I least expect them to.
What is it about the Meadowlands that made you want to spend 10 years photographing the landscape and inhabitants, and do you think these reasons motivate other artists and writers to explore the area? ‘I honestly couldn’t begin to speculate why other artists and writers are drawn to the area. For me I think that I spent so long in the Meadowlands because I had such a hard time trying to resolve my relationship to this place. I first discovered it the same way most people do, driving through on my way to the airport. I think for most people the Meadowlands is just that, a place you pass through on the way to someplace else. For me it started simply from being completely blown away by the landscape. I was fascinated by the wetlands and how all of these amazing structures could exist so close to where I lived in Manhattan. It started out a fairly strict documentary project that adhered to my ideas as to what a document is. The more time I spent in the Meadowlands the more overwhelmed I became with ideas of representation of documentation. About half way through the project I stated to think about how I could move away from the specifics of the document and more towards thinking about how the Meadowlands could serve for a metaphor for other issues that I was struggling with’.
What was your process when working on this project? Were you more likely to go out to the Meadowlands and wander around until something caught your eye or did you have specific places and ideas in mind that you wanted to capture?
‘As you can imagine as I moved away from the document the process changed quite a bit. When I first started I would drive around until I found something that interested me. As I started to get to know the space a bit more I would scout out different places and take notes as to when I wanted to photograph it. I would have all these lists of places to shoot in overcast, places to shoot when the sun was setting or rising and so on. Towards the end of the 10 years my process became more akin to that as a writer where I would be at home thinking about different ideas and sketching out pictures with a pen and paper. I would then try and make create or stage photographs from these different sketches’.
Can you tell us a little about the editing process for the book?
‘The initial edit was pretty easy. You would think that after 10 years and only 50 images in a book it would be this arduous task. There were not thousands of good pictures to choose from. Over the years I was always editing, meaning after the first few years I only had a handful of images I was happy with. With each year a few more got added to the pile of winners. In many ways I knew the book was finished when I had enough work that I was happy with to fill out the story. The real difficulty for me was the order and flow of the book. I wanted it to feel like a photography book not a book of photographs’.
Did you ever spend a week or more in the Meadowlands or did you venture there more as a day trip?
‘I never spent a week in the Meadowlands. With no traffic I live about 10 minutes away so it was hard to justify not sleeping in my own bed’.
Are you working on any other project now that you can talk about?
‘I have been working on a bunch of long-term projects. I am not sure at this point which one will rise to the top to have a more resolved ending’.
Tagged: portraits
- 10
- 0
RELATED
Sometimes composed, sometimes candid, Dido Fontana’s flash-heavy photographs seem on the surface to be a pastiche of the quasi-naturalistic style many photographers seem to be working in these days, but the humorous, gritty, and surreal way in which she portrays her subtly deviant subjects has more in common with John Waters’ celebration of trash than Dash Snow’s and Terry Richardson’s smarmy, self-congratulatory hipsterdom. Read more
Amazing! That’s about the only word that could be used to describe the work of young Californian artist, Danny Roberts. He studied Photography at Cal Poly SLO, and then Fashion Design at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Of his work, he says: ‘When I was five, I convinced myself that pouring mud onto cardboard was how to make concrete. I began drawing as a young child, but it wasn’t until a few years ago, when I decided to practice everyday, that I started getting better’. Read more
Armed America portraits by Kyle Cassidy
The Armed America website compiles portraits of the owners of weapons in America. Photographer and writer Kyle Cassidy traveled more than 12,000 miles for more than two years taking pictures of armed Americans in their houses, all the while looking for the answer to the complex question: ‘Why do you own a gun?’ Cassidy’s work has become an item of incalculable value, not only because of its conceptual strength, but also because of the description of the way of living, feeling and thinking of many inhabitants of America. Read more
Also by ALISON ZAVOS
James Reynolds documents last meal requests
James Reynolds currently lives and works in London. He recently graduated from Kingston University studying Graphic Design. This series, Last Suppers, documents former Death Row prisoners’ requests for their last meal before execution. [see more photos at Feature Shoot] Read more
Paris-based Thomas Straub has worked as a photographer in advertising for the past fifteen years, with client including Piaget, De Beers, Yves Saint Laurent and Hennessy. Read more
Alina Rudya is a photographer living and working in Kiev, Ukraine. Of this series, Soviet Women Dreaming of Future, she says, ‘The full name of this series of self-portraits is Soviet Peasant Woman Dreaming of her Bright Capitalistic Future. I was born in the era of Perestroika and didn’t live during Soviet era that much. Nevertheless, my image abroad, no mater how hard I try, is always impacted by my Soviet background. People are either joking or seriously think, that I’m different because I came from Ukraine. Even my foreign friends jokingly call me red or soviet. I love traveling and I feel myself very cosmopolitan. But every time I’m applying for a visa to travel to EU I feel myself as a Soviet peasant woman who wants to benefit from Western capitalistic wealth. So I created this series, because I wanted to show the stereotypical exaggerated view of me in the West’. Read more
YOU'RE SAYING (0)
No comments yet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Luo Yang is a photographer and graphic designer from Shenyang, China, whose work is currently being featured in a solo show at Taikang Top Space in Beijing.
I love the bold watercolors of California artist Erin Althea, with their esoteric imagery and experimentation. Yup, I’m just a sucker for the folksy stuff.
Anyone interested in the importance of limitations on creativity should check out the new publication Vormator: The Elements of Design. Begun two years ago, it challenges artists to create a visual by using a very limited palette of shapes and possibilities. Read more
After getting lost in the quagmire that is the internet, M83’s Digital Shades, first released digitally in 2007, has just been given a space on the shelf in your nearest music shop. Before shooting to acclaim with Saturday=Youth, Anthony Gonzalez looked closer to Krautrock and Eno and produced this ambient sometimes beautiful record. There’s much less of a disco feel than both Saturdays and his first album, Before the Dawn Heals Us. Some might say it’s a bit self-indulgent, not easily accessible, and more of a soundscape than a pop attempt. Yet, like Eno, Gonzalez is slowly becoming a master of the perfect chord sequence, and the result is an interesting, often heart-wrenching, set of compositions. Read about M83’s favourite songs right now.
This gourmet paint is made by only two dedicated paint makers without fillers, just pigment and oil, like it should be. There is only one store that sells it and it is run out of the Elisabeth Foundation for the Arts building in Chelsea, New York. They have a table set up there so you can play with and mix any of the colours together to see its effects. I usually go to pick one tube up and hang around asking questions to one half of the duo, Gail, and usually leave with five tubes, having learned a lot about the history and the process behind each colour.
Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.
My friend, illustrator Ai Tatebayashi, is known for her lovely color schemes and she forwarded me the link to this beautiful handknit accessory store from Istanbul. With Etsy, we can now purchase talented designer’s work from all over the world. And I couldn’t resist, I bought a necklace-scarf and cannot wait until it comes to my door! Read more
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
Diane Koss’ recycled bottle monsters
Check out Diane Koss’ amazing handmade stuffed monsters if you’re looking for a last-minute gift. Her mostly cycloptic creatures are fashioned from felt made from one hundred percent recycled plastic bottles. Read more
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Good thing Kris Kuksi channelled the trauma of growing up with an alcoholic stepfather, his disdain for ‘the typical American life and pop culture’, and his fascination with the macabre into obsessive, baroque assemblages, paintings, and drawings. Read more
Cast from actual Keys, these unisex rings by young New York-based designer Kiel Mead are a fun way to celebrate an old car or an apartment. They come in Sterling Silver and we have them for sale through the Lost At E Minor online shop. Read more
We’ve just updated the Lost At E Minor iPhone app in the iTunes store with some new features. It’s a daily snapshot of the latest content from the site. You can download it now. Win? Well, it’s free. So you win, we win. Snap!
FOLLOW US
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.
