Beth Dow

Minnesota Center for Photography About Fieldwork
Stone Circle, left	Stone Circle, right
Broken Tree	Burning Stubble	Seven Stumps
Brush Piles	Wood Pile	Wood Pile and Road
Rubble	Den	Brush
Three Rocks	Campfire	Stones and Tree
Bales	Strands	Bonfire
Quarry	Row	Saplings
Shreds	Sign	Stump House
Two Holes	Sling	Hole
Wind	Grove	Three Trees
Treetops	Willow	Trees with Snow
Hay	Lake	Clump of Trees
Gravel	Door	Ruts
4 Life	Bags	Looped Branch
Mulch	Ring	Sticks
Burning Field		Oak and Poplars

These photographs depict peculiar sculptural arrangements I find by chance - ordinary places where little dramas unfold. While Fieldwork refers to the observation and gathering of raw data, it also suggests rough fortifications built from material at hand, like brush and rocks. From ancient, monumental stone circles in an English field to dried grass after snow melt, these are silent pictures that leave the viewer completely alone in the landscape. They were made in the precarious seasons of late fall and early spring, when everything hangs between life, death, and life again. These are the bones of life laid bare, when color is reduced and branches are left exposed. My photographs have the scratchy, crosshatched look of etchings or pencil drawings so the prints look hand-built, stick by stick. They are printed in platinum-palladium to fully exploit the tonal subtleties of both subject and medium, using traditional photographic practice to describe the grey areas of marginal landscapes.

Fieldwork was made from inside photographic tradition, using the vocabulary and grammar of the medium’s formal history. I used the serendipity of a walk to find meaning in the quietest seasons, when evidence of life is the hardest to find yet it persists, and is all the more hopeful in its tenacity. Above all, these pictures are about the beauty of mystery and the mystery of beauty.