graeme mitchell » locations/travel

Cape Cod

admin — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:21:02 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

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The Mojave Desert

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 12:53:57 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

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Valley of Fire, Nevada

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:00:15 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

Happy Valley, Oregon ‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; ‘They called...
Lake Mead, Nevada photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo:...

Salton Sea, California

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:59:53 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

Amboy, California photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...
Twenty Nine Palms, California photo: Twenty Nine Palms, California, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell Speaking of...

Lake Mead, Nevada

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:44:07 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

Valley of Fire, Nevada photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...

Amboy, California

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:41:53 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

Salton Sea, California photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...
Twenty Nine Palms, California photo: Twenty Nine Palms, California, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell Speaking of...

Twenty Nine Palms, California

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 20:16:19 +0000

photo: Twenty Nine Palms, California, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell

Speaking of Twenty Nine Palms. A really great great great photograph by An-My Lê was taken at the marine base there. It’s in the MOMA collection.

Amboy, California photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...
Salton Sea, California photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...
Walker Evan’s Still Lifes Walker Evans is one of the cornerstones in the history...

Happy Valley, Oregon

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 20:50:14 +0000

‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od’ und leer das Meer.

-from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

photo: Happy Valley, OR. 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell

Valley of Fire, Nevada photo: ©Graeme Mitchell photo: ©Graeme Mitchell...
A Series Studying Reflected Light, Part 2 This is a continuation of the series I began, here....
A Series Studying Reflected Light, Part 3 More of these, photo: from light study, 2010, ©Graeme Mitchell....

Portrait: Emily VanCamp

admin — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:39:39 +0000

The actress, Emily VanCamp.

photo: Emily VanCamp, St. Barts, Feb 09. © Graeme Mitchell.

Portrait: painter, Alex Steckly, again again. I’ve posted a number portraits of the painter, Alex Steckly...
Portrait: Julian Julian is someone I have the pleasure to photograph whenever...
Portrait: My Brothers Part 2 I took a portrait of each of my brothers while...

St. Barts, London, Home, Vorticism, Away, Love, Great Books

admin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:21:50 +0000

Got to shoot in St. Barts for 5 day, a friend’s wedding. Amazing time.

Also read Beckett and chain smoked on the beach. No, not Camus, but still…

yay

Then to London for some of their fashion week parties, meetings with mags. Tried to spend time on the street shooting, but the streets of that city: stoic (read, snore), so I began to wonder if there ever was a seminal London street photographer? Other than the bit of work Robert Frank did (in Wales?), but I couldn’t think of anyone…? Anyone?

photo: from the book Robert Frank: London/Wales, © Robert Frank.

Then home, I hit Penn station out of Newark on Monday eve rush hour and the train station was like firecrackers going off everyplace, felt remarkable to be back in the crazy. Never satiated with that, never ever. Gluttonous for the madness.

IN THE STATION METRO
By Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

(That’s a well known imagest poem that was part of a one of the more short lived art movements dubbed, Vorticism, which also had it proponents in photography. The photography bit. though ambitious in theory, was to not such great effect I think. The best part was what it was called, Vortography, which would not be, I imagine, an easy moniker to live up to…yeah, in retrospect, the name may have been the origin of the movements failing.

photo: Vortograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Update, I just confirmed a job on the W. Coast for next week, fly out today, so I’ll be gone again for a week…maybe two. The blog goes neglected again. Golly.

I guess in the meantime, cruise to the newsstands and take a look at Katie Grand’s (formerly the force behind POP) new mag, LOVE. Maybe not amazing yet, but most certainly promising.

photo: cover of first issue of LOVE magazine, Beth Ditto, photo by Mert and Marcus.

That or – going back to Beckett – read his trilogy if you haven’t. I’d tried twice and never made it much further than Molloy, but I guess I’ve come to a place where I can read it and be absorbed by it, absorbed. Someone said once, I forget who, that you really can’t read/enjoy/understand the greats until you yourself have lived for awhile, lived the things that the books are about. Not that I’m old and wise, gawdnoiamnot, but suddenly the long long winded Russians seem exciting and Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the close of Ulysses seems, uhhh, doable. I do hope by my 40s I’ll be able to get to Finnegan’s Wake, and even develop the patience for poetry.

[...]you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have caried me to the threshold of my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

-from The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

That takes me to a different world. Yes it does.

R.I.P. Irving Penn Here. The last to go of the greats of the...

Umatilla, OR.

admin — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:28:50 +0000

If you drive fast straight east from Portland for approximately 3 hours you’ll pass within about 9 miles of this place. It’s the kind of place that conjures absolutely nothing in the imagination. It’s a desert of sorts.

“Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucination of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death. -DE SELBY”

Epigraph from The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

photo: Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

photo: A Road to a Prison, Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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Bolivia Photographs

admin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:00:37 +0000

These many photographs are from a trip I took recently to the Alto Plano of Bolivia to visit my sister, Erin, who lives there.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

Print Edition: Bolivia photo: Untitled (from Bolivia), 7×10.5″ archival pigment print, edition of...

Where I grew up

admin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:58:07 +0000

Over the years I watched as street lights were added.

Funny how easily we adjust. I can’t remember what this town was like growing up, or what memory there is is like a dream I remember having but can’t remember what it was about.

All of a sudden I have the notion that much of what we take for granted is vague.

photo: Canby, Oregon, Dec 2007. © Graeme Mitchell 2007.

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Covet, Spring ’08

admin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:04:15 +0000

Some snaps Covet’s creative director, Tara took whilst we shot her spring ’08 line. It was hard not to feel a sadness there at Coney Island; neglect was apparent, and you could see that it’s long life was coming to an end. There was also a mood of bitterness, nostalgia and heartbreak amongst the proprietors, people who’ve lived and worked there their entire lives, and who were now watching the boardwalk fall into disrepair.

On another note: Tara did a great job on this season, some great pieces to photograph!

Location: Coney Island, NY.
Hair: Sarah Potempa w/ Wall Group.
Make-Up: Kehla.
Assistant: Aaron Modico.
And a big big thanks to J.T. at Cha Cha’s on the boardwalk for staging the shoot.

Portrait: Tara St James The designer, Tara St. James. photo: Tara St. James, NYC,...

Las Vegas, NV.

admin — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 17:09:15 +0000

You try so hard to displace the place in order to understand it or to make it more an obtuse phenomenon than the ugly actuality it is, that it is so perfectly; you do this in an attempt to justify or excuse it philosophically. But it takes heavy amounts of drink, drugs, regression just to make it bearable let alone excusable, seeing through eyes that won’t focus b/c in this place they don’t need to focus – focus is actually discouraged. It’s the premise of a child’s ball pit in the back of drab and tired fast food restaurant in the middle of the desert; it’s this premise expanded infinitely: padded surfaces, rounded corners, a cattle pen. Just when you attempt approach at clarity, some sort of recognition or disconnection, it dissipates, the clarity that is. It’s like running in a dream: the harder you try the heavier you become in a foggy futility. And there’s not even any redeeming giddiness or hopeful moments of expression, at all.

It is void.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 3.

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:14:43 +0000

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 2.

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 02:07:19 +0000

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A Road Trip, Part 1.

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:31:16 +0000

My brother, his girlfriend, and I recently drove from Washington Heights NYC to Canby, OR. (thus my absence here) on an impromptu trip home to settle some destitute and surreal family matters. Bittersweet, so to speak, as the trips ultimate reason became a faint yet ubiquitous backdrop to the otherwise wonderful time we had. There’s much I’d like to share about the trip, from becoming friends with my brother again to getting intoxicated in every state we passed through, but I feel like this is neither the time nor the place.

Less talk more pictures, right?

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Lumber Mills (2 of 2).

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:57:30 +0000

1 of 2 is here.

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Lumber Mills (1 of 2), or I miss nature.

admin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 01:20:57 +0000

As usual I came upon these while looking for something entirely different amongst my humble little archives. My first sentiment was that I really miss nature and the damp fortitudes of the Pacific Northwest, my second thought was I should put them up here, b/c even though they’re pictures I’ve since rejected they are nonetheless of places not many people get to see – much like the Dammasche series (here and here).

I’m not in the mood to write much, so the short of it is that these are some pics I took in 2004 as a personal project shooting the lasting steam lumber mills of Oregon. I wandered from the project, but I still wish to go back and photograph the dwindling remnants of the timber industry. It’s the lasting remnants that in my mind symbolize a simpler time and way of life. This is a purely romantic notion – a silly one at that- and I’ve no shame in fostering it. Really, it’s so fictionalized in my mind, stills almost don’t do it justice; it’s the kind of project that warrants doing the director-moving-pictures kind of thing.

My biggest ambition is that these might inspire a daydream in you…

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Avedon’s Studio

admin — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 15:20:37 +0000

If you’re shooting in NYC and need to rent a studio, consider Avedon’s old studio. It is neither particularly big, nor is the location fun, but neither of these qualms can possibly deter from that auspicious cyc.

I can imagine Avedon brooding around those halls alone, rife with anxiousness, looking at the board of dimly illuminated work prints riddled with his corrections…possibility and history weighing upon him…

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Dammasche, or a now defunct mental health hospital. Part 2.

admin — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 20:28:10 +0000

See part 1 here.

Again, these are Dammasche.

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Dammasche, or a now defunct mental health hospital. Part 1.

admin — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:19:15 +0000

I shouldn’t be showing these pictures b/c they’re old, not very good, and I fervently rejected them along with most everything else I shot short of 5 months ago. The thing is, that people are intrigued by them and are always asking to see more of them. I only ask, if you’ve wandered here not knowing me, is that you see my official portfolio. Not self-promotion, only that I’d be bummed if you only saw left-overs.

But I digress.

They are malady. They are Dammasche.

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