Saturday, 16 November 2013 14:00
Nich McElroy is an American-born, Canada-dwelling photographer with a love of adventure and knack for capturing some pretty darn eye-pleasing scenes. Whether snapping magical woodlands, seaside escapes or mountainous terrain, his pics make us want to ditch the couch and blanket and set off on an expedition of sorts. We asked Nich a few questions about his work, and just where his inspiration comes from.
What is your name and how old are you? My full name is Nich Hance McElroy, and I'm 28 years old.
Where were you born and where do you live now? I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (roughly), and have lived in Vancouver, British Columbia for about a year.
How does where you grew up and where you live now affect your photography? Well, where I grew up is a different place altogether, but it isn't far from Vancouver. I lived in Seattle from 3-18 and went back for a stint in my twenties. It definitely informed some of the biases in my photography. The weather is famously bad, which means that it's easy to find atmospheric light. I think that Seattle kind of fine tuned my sensibilities about avoiding flat or bright light. It's also chock full of pretty places (mountains, forests, lakes, an inland arm of the Pacific Ocean) to explore. It always feels a little bunk to assume that people who are from pretty regions especially love scenery or something - of course everybody does, right? - and in some ways I wish that I was from a place that doesn't have the natural beauty Seattle has, just because it inevitably makes you lazy as photographer. You can just put a mountain in the frame and say "voila!" As a foil I think about the Dutch Masters, or the really talented contemporary Dutch photographers, on this. If you live in a flat country that's largely below sea-level (which is its own sort of beautiful), what do you? Maybe you get insanely sensitive to light, you actually give it the weight and presence of a whole landscape, just through incredible attention to its nuances.
What areas, things or people in your neighbourhood do you most like to photograph? I don't photograph very much in my neighbourhood. There's a Mason-Dixon line in Vancouver and a lot of talk about East vs. West Vancouver (confusingly enough there is also the "West End" and a separate municipality called "West Vancouver" - go figure). I live in East Vancouver, which is cheaper and younger and many other things different than West Van. I spend at least an hour a day walking my dog here, and inevitably I snap little photos (mostly camera phone) of the laneways near my house. By far my favourite discovery has been all of the neighbourhood gardens, especially as the northern hemisphere has moved through the summer months. Every alleyway will have a dozen of these pocket patches of green, often shoe-horned between parking strips and buildings, but growing food, herbs, and ornamentals. I haven't really found the right photographic register to document these yet, but that's what I'm dreaming about photographing in the neighbourhood. Photographing makes my walks longer, so the dog likes it, too.
What do you shoot on (digital or analogue) and why do you choose to use that type? I shoot film because it looks better. My (very limited) experience with digital photography almost gave me an ulcer. Even with a camera phone, I don't know how you choose an image when you've taken fifteen variations, and how you care (in a kind of precious, paternal way) about each image if it's just a part of a sequence. I naturally veer toward a scatterbrain, so fewer choices helps me produce better work.
Is there a certain camera or type of film that you wish you could own? I flirt with the idea of stepping up from a 6x7cm medium format camera to a 4x5 inch view camera, but I'm also sensitive to the economics of picture taking.
Is there a running theme to the work you create, or do you just make whatever comes to mind? It's actually both, insofar as I'm a single individual with discrete interests and a more-or-less coherent aesthetic. So I shoot whatever I fancy and then winnow it down later. I let my mood or aesthetic sense at a given time produce work and I sort out what's what in the editing process. Sometimes I'll see a little glimmer of something in past work and I try to pick up and follow that thread, but I'm not very systematic. Systematically unsystematic.
What kinds of ideas and things are you working on at the moment? In my photography? I guess that I'm really curious about the ways that we naturalise artificial things (like agriculture, animals, parks, etc), and also - this is the story that fewer people know - convince ourselves that natural things are totally artificial. This is a way bigger, hairier, more theoretically loaded debate, but I've been really intrigued by the natural places that we've forgotten are natural; like, say, the Los Angeles River, which is a real river, right in the center of L.A., that until a couple of years ago was mostly considered as a place to race cars through in action movies (and Grease). In a similar vein, I'm doing an artist residency on Rabbit Island in Lake Superior next summer that will explore some of this stuff, but in a setting that's only recently been inhabited and developed.
What kind of subjects interest you the most? I'm kind of an omnivore when it comes to these things, but I'll say that I've been less and less convinced by my own brand of landscape photography. I think that going back to simple color/tonal/spatial arrangements and more strict portraiture is interesting to me right now, simply as a way to try batting with the opposite hand. I always have, and always will, take portraits of the people that I love, but less and less of these photographs are finding their way into my sets or my broader thinking about photography.
Do you prefer to create set-up photographs, or just wander the streets until you see a photo? I sort of wander the streets (hills, fields) until I see a photo I can set up; but I'm not a studio photographer, no.
If you were to teach a photography appreciation class, what kind of lessons would you try to teach your students? This is such a great question. I recently read Rolland Barthes' Camera Lucida, which is probably the most nauseatingly talked-to-death book ever written about photography, but his basic terminology is helpful. Barthes talks about the "punctum" as the thing in an image that really gets you. I guess that it's literally what reaches out and pokes, pricks or punctures you. I think that I would compile 100 images for which I can identify a punctum, and of course sort out, in some thoughtful way, why. Is it stylistic/formal? Is it how you historicise a photograph (this is a picture of so and so or such and such, a very sad/happy day)? Does something else adhere in a photograph? We agree on certain images as powerful, so it wouldn't just be the subjective Uncle Nich Photo Hour. I think that I would go through all of that and say the same to them what I said to myself recently: if there isn't that thing, whatever the hell it is, that pokes you, and maybe gets under your skin or into your heart, or scares or excites you, don't bother liking it. Perhaps more strongly: in a world so insanely saturated with photography, be completely comfortable with not appreciating all (or even much) of it, but don't lose sight of the inherent power of certain images. They will feed you better than breakfast.
What is the strangest thing or thought that has inspired a photo? I worked on a musk ox farm in Alaska for a handful of summers and one of the older bulls, maybe 14 or 15, which is ancient for an intact male musk ox, died. It was the weekend and we couldn't get our vet out to perform a necropsy, so we opened him up ourselves to see if there was an injury or trauma, or some obvious illness. In the process we pulled a huge pile of musk ox viscera onto a blue tarp. I'd spent the whole summer photographing the peaks and glacial valleys around the farm, and suddenly this rounded pile of musk ox guts kind of spoke to me (not literally) as a bizarre sort of landscape scene. The photo's in my "How To Be Alone" series if you'd like to see it.
What other budding photographers do you love? Carl Wooley; Chris Coyle; Suzanna Zak;Lina Scheynius; Jennilee Marigomen; so so many others!
What do you enjoy doing when not taking photos? I read, walk the dog, ride my bicycle, drink Scotch.
Where can we see more of your work? nhmcelroy.com, nhmcelroy.tumblr.com, and instagram.com/nhmcelroy
Where were you born and where do you live now? I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (roughly), and have lived in Vancouver, British Columbia for about a year.
How does where you grew up and where you live now affect your photography? Well, where I grew up is a different place altogether, but it isn't far from Vancouver. I lived in Seattle from 3-18 and went back for a stint in my twenties. It definitely informed some of the biases in my photography. The weather is famously bad, which means that it's easy to find atmospheric light. I think that Seattle kind of fine tuned my sensibilities about avoiding flat or bright light. It's also chock full of pretty places (mountains, forests, lakes, an inland arm of the Pacific Ocean) to explore. It always feels a little bunk to assume that people who are from pretty regions especially love scenery or something - of course everybody does, right? - and in some ways I wish that I was from a place that doesn't have the natural beauty Seattle has, just because it inevitably makes you lazy as photographer. You can just put a mountain in the frame and say "voila!" As a foil I think about the Dutch Masters, or the really talented contemporary Dutch photographers, on this. If you live in a flat country that's largely below sea-level (which is its own sort of beautiful), what do you? Maybe you get insanely sensitive to light, you actually give it the weight and presence of a whole landscape, just through incredible attention to its nuances.
What areas, things or people in your neighbourhood do you most like to photograph? I don't photograph very much in my neighbourhood. There's a Mason-Dixon line in Vancouver and a lot of talk about East vs. West Vancouver (confusingly enough there is also the "West End" and a separate municipality called "West Vancouver" - go figure). I live in East Vancouver, which is cheaper and younger and many other things different than West Van. I spend at least an hour a day walking my dog here, and inevitably I snap little photos (mostly camera phone) of the laneways near my house. By far my favourite discovery has been all of the neighbourhood gardens, especially as the northern hemisphere has moved through the summer months. Every alleyway will have a dozen of these pocket patches of green, often shoe-horned between parking strips and buildings, but growing food, herbs, and ornamentals. I haven't really found the right photographic register to document these yet, but that's what I'm dreaming about photographing in the neighbourhood. Photographing makes my walks longer, so the dog likes it, too.
What do you shoot on (digital or analogue) and why do you choose to use that type? I shoot film because it looks better. My (very limited) experience with digital photography almost gave me an ulcer. Even with a camera phone, I don't know how you choose an image when you've taken fifteen variations, and how you care (in a kind of precious, paternal way) about each image if it's just a part of a sequence. I naturally veer toward a scatterbrain, so fewer choices helps me produce better work.
Is there a certain camera or type of film that you wish you could own? I flirt with the idea of stepping up from a 6x7cm medium format camera to a 4x5 inch view camera, but I'm also sensitive to the economics of picture taking.
Is there a running theme to the work you create, or do you just make whatever comes to mind? It's actually both, insofar as I'm a single individual with discrete interests and a more-or-less coherent aesthetic. So I shoot whatever I fancy and then winnow it down later. I let my mood or aesthetic sense at a given time produce work and I sort out what's what in the editing process. Sometimes I'll see a little glimmer of something in past work and I try to pick up and follow that thread, but I'm not very systematic. Systematically unsystematic.
What kinds of ideas and things are you working on at the moment? In my photography? I guess that I'm really curious about the ways that we naturalise artificial things (like agriculture, animals, parks, etc), and also - this is the story that fewer people know - convince ourselves that natural things are totally artificial. This is a way bigger, hairier, more theoretically loaded debate, but I've been really intrigued by the natural places that we've forgotten are natural; like, say, the Los Angeles River, which is a real river, right in the center of L.A., that until a couple of years ago was mostly considered as a place to race cars through in action movies (and Grease). In a similar vein, I'm doing an artist residency on Rabbit Island in Lake Superior next summer that will explore some of this stuff, but in a setting that's only recently been inhabited and developed.
What kind of subjects interest you the most? I'm kind of an omnivore when it comes to these things, but I'll say that I've been less and less convinced by my own brand of landscape photography. I think that going back to simple color/tonal/spatial arrangements and more strict portraiture is interesting to me right now, simply as a way to try batting with the opposite hand. I always have, and always will, take portraits of the people that I love, but less and less of these photographs are finding their way into my sets or my broader thinking about photography.
Do you prefer to create set-up photographs, or just wander the streets until you see a photo? I sort of wander the streets (hills, fields) until I see a photo I can set up; but I'm not a studio photographer, no.
If you were to teach a photography appreciation class, what kind of lessons would you try to teach your students? This is such a great question. I recently read Rolland Barthes' Camera Lucida, which is probably the most nauseatingly talked-to-death book ever written about photography, but his basic terminology is helpful. Barthes talks about the "punctum" as the thing in an image that really gets you. I guess that it's literally what reaches out and pokes, pricks or punctures you. I think that I would compile 100 images for which I can identify a punctum, and of course sort out, in some thoughtful way, why. Is it stylistic/formal? Is it how you historicise a photograph (this is a picture of so and so or such and such, a very sad/happy day)? Does something else adhere in a photograph? We agree on certain images as powerful, so it wouldn't just be the subjective Uncle Nich Photo Hour. I think that I would go through all of that and say the same to them what I said to myself recently: if there isn't that thing, whatever the hell it is, that pokes you, and maybe gets under your skin or into your heart, or scares or excites you, don't bother liking it. Perhaps more strongly: in a world so insanely saturated with photography, be completely comfortable with not appreciating all (or even much) of it, but don't lose sight of the inherent power of certain images. They will feed you better than breakfast.
What is the strangest thing or thought that has inspired a photo? I worked on a musk ox farm in Alaska for a handful of summers and one of the older bulls, maybe 14 or 15, which is ancient for an intact male musk ox, died. It was the weekend and we couldn't get our vet out to perform a necropsy, so we opened him up ourselves to see if there was an injury or trauma, or some obvious illness. In the process we pulled a huge pile of musk ox viscera onto a blue tarp. I'd spent the whole summer photographing the peaks and glacial valleys around the farm, and suddenly this rounded pile of musk ox guts kind of spoke to me (not literally) as a bizarre sort of landscape scene. The photo's in my "How To Be Alone" series if you'd like to see it.
What other budding photographers do you love? Carl Wooley; Chris Coyle; Suzanna Zak;Lina Scheynius; Jennilee Marigomen; so so many others!
What do you enjoy doing when not taking photos? I read, walk the dog, ride my bicycle, drink Scotch.
Where can we see more of your work? nhmcelroy.com, nhmcelroy.tumblr.com, and instagram.com/nhmcelroy
source: http://www.frankie.com.au/blogs/photography/how-we-live
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