Wednesday, April 29, 2009

The Lamp Posts of Skinner Butte Park

"Skinner Butte Park runs along the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon. An older portion of the park is illuminated with substantial iron lamp posts which have been repeatedly painted over the years. Corrosion interacting with the paint has left the posts with remarkable texture, color and beauty."

So reads Craig Hickman's short description of his latest photo project. Aiming his camera squarely up one of the most overlooked subjects in the contemporary landscape, Hickman has created a surprisingly diverse typology which hits just the right mix of discovery, banality, and physical history. Imagine the bastard love-child of Misrach's Seguaros and The Bechers' Watertowers. Better yet, you don't have to imagine. Here's a sampling:










2 comments:

Zacharias said...

typologies succeed in their banalities, im not sure about the post processing for these. isnt it an 'objective' look?

Blake Andrews said...

Craig could probably comment better on this but my understanding is that they haven't been heavily post processed. Craig shoots them mid-day. The background is underexposed a few stops and the flash brightness is increased. You can see other examples of this applied to flowers and twigs on Craig's site: www.dryreading.com