Oct

30

2018

Joel Anderson

I’m a photographer working in classic film and darkroom techniques. My themes vary, but my goal is always the same: cutting to the essence of the subject, whether it is a farm animal or a coal miner, an Amish child or an old-growth forest. Although I’m an engineer by training and digital holds fascination, I still prefer using film. I use three cameras: a hand-built Phillips 8×16″ ultra-large-format view camera, a 1940s-era 4×5″ field view camera outfitted with modern lenses, and a medium-format Hasselblad 203FE. The photographs are handprinted in my traditional wet darkroom using archival methods and materials which produce rich texture and tones. My affinity for rural scenes comes from growing up on a farm in central Pennsylvania surrounded by Amish neighbors. I went on to get my university degrees and worked as an engineer in California and New Mexico before resigning in 1992 to pursue photography full-time. After a four-year stint living and photographing near Yosemite, California, I returned to the same farm in Pennsylvania to photograph the changes in rural life. The small houses in this series are slave cabins that have been restored at locations in Louisiana. Part of my current project is photographing slave cabins used both in the South and into the Northeast.

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