Recede
Short Takes » “Memory is the fourth dimension to any landscape.” ≈ Janet Fitch
Something occurred to me this week, causing me a number of wry moments, along with some sly laconic chuckling. I’ve spent fourteen years making modern digital photographs of various landscape oriented scenes, objects, vehicles, massive machinery, and other things, sometimes living…look like old autochrome color photography, ambrotypes, Daguerreotypes, albumins, tintypes, silver nitrate, and now, even silver halide images from various eras of our photographic legacy.
And here I am now bringing actual old photographs into the postmodernist age. Retro in foresight if you will. Or digital in hindsight. To create a new life for them, at least to record that they were once here.
Bending Time.
I try to be consistent in that regard, and I love the concept of it. I love all the more just the making of them. There is a quiet peace to doing so, a sense of honoring something left behind long ago by unknown persons.
As a painter, printmaker, photographer and definitely digital artist, it folds in well, leavening the other more traditional work I create.
Life is so far out there it’s back again.
So here is an example of what I mean regarding the bending of Time. A photo made in September 2013 in Jerome Arizona, the steepest town in America. The town the Earp brothers visited once but opted out of, just because by that time, they were seeking peace, and Jerome then was anything but a peaceful abode.
“Clouds have a tendency to merge into fog on the side of Mingus mountain, allowing some views of Jerome that are wintry more than most. Last September, we had a snow drop that lasted a few days, and coupled with some misty weather sneaking in and out quickly, I was able to grab this shot.
But, this kind of weather on top of a dusting of snow never lasts long, so I watch my windows as I work more often in the winter, and at times, it turns into a quick and literal run through town. Looking up is a major occupation in Jerome. There are things above you that otherwise, you would just never have a sighting by looking straight ahead.” ≈ from 2014
“We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.”
≈ Lawrence Durrell
Jerome is physically much larger than it seems from this photo. Many of the buildings near the top are businesses; restaurants, cafes, ice cream, and candy shops, a few art galleries, even more artists’ studios. All are intriguing shops and on a small ridge top below the town proper, a phenomenal historical museum sits. There are two great bars uptown and one unbelievably wonderful old hotel, which owns half of the bars. But the population? It’s smaller than it looks, like many small Western towns in out-of-the-way places. It’s only twenty minutes from Sedona, which is a very different world down in the redrocks.
“Recede,” digital composite image shot from East Avenue on high, from the ‘America: Lost & Found’ series, Image Copyright 2025 Tom Ogburn. Words all rights reserved.