Documentary Photography

Colville Confederated Tribes’ pride

 

The Omak Stampede held in August every year is one of the main gatherings of the Colville Confederated Tribes of Washington.
The Colville Reservation covers nearly 1.4 million acres in Washington’s Okanogan and Ferry counties, in the middle of the state.

The Omak Stampede, in Omak, Wash., is both an official rodeo and a gathering of members of the Colville Confederated Tribes, in central Washington. The event takes place the second weekend of August every year. This year I didn’t stay for the event, and instead shot a few pictures of the tepees set up every year new the pow wow performance area. I then took my first drive through the reservation ever, stopping in Nespelem and eventually at the Coulee Dam on the reservation’s border. It was great to finally see this place, as it covers 2,100 square miles and has a key role in the state’s and region’s history.

In the path of fire’s fury

 

Pateros was the hardest hit single community, where wildfires burned a swath of homes after the flames raced down the hillside forcing residents to flee with almost no time to grab belongings.
Residents of Pateros, three weeks after the fire destroyed many of their homes, now clean up and pick up the pieces of their massively disrupted lives.
The United Methodist Church of Pateros survived the blaze, despite the fire taking homes to its west and the minister’s home to east. Having a small bit of defensible space without fuel likely helped.
One can see some of the dozens of burned structures in the Methow Valley, like this, driving north from Pateros to Twisp.
The road connecting Twisp and Oknanogan saw some of the greatest damage from the ongoing fires.

This past week I visited areas that were burned in the Carlton Complex fires, which now rank as the state’s worst in recorded history. Part of a neighborhood was burnt down in the small town of Pateros, on the Columbia River. More than 300 homes were lost in the Carlton Complex blaze as of late July, which still is the epicenter multiple fires now burning in Okanogan County.  It is deeply saddening to see a person’s or family’s dreams turned to black ash.

I believe this fire will be a watershed in how this state contemplates dealing with people living and building in the so-called fire wildland-urban interface zones, which are at high risk of wildfires. Insurance companies will no doubt be rewriting their policies. The larger issues of how we will prepare for a drier, hotter, and more fire-prone future because of ongoing climate change remains to be seen. I expect more fires of this magnitude in the future in this part of the West.

I do not know if those with money or big dreams will still be flocking to resort and natural areas like the Methow Valley to live closer to nature, now that we have tasted nature’s wrath. My experience as a former St. Louisan, where I have witnessed two 100-year floods on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, is that people will likely again build and return in areas once destroyed. The pressures to do so likely will overwhelm many of our best efforts to prevent through smart planning the next all-but certain natural disaster. (Click on each photograph to see larger pictures on a separate picture page.)

(Note this post was updated on Aug. 11, to reflect a more accurate count of the fire damage based on media accounts from local officials.)

Fires continue to burn central Washington

 

One of the fire incident command centers is located at the Methow Valley Elementary School near Winthrop, where hundreds of tents are pitched, creating a small city.
One of the active blazes in the Methow Valley, when this photo was taken on Aug. 6.
The many hundreds of firefighters have been welcomed warmly in Okanogan County.
The air is thick with smoke in the Columbia River basin, north from Wenatchee to the Canadian border. This was taken near the fire damaged town of Pateros on Highway 97.

I just completed a trip through some of the most impacted areas of central Washington, where the largest fires ever in the state have left a path of devastation and continued disruption. Okanogan County, a beautiful mountainous and a popular recreation area, was among the hardest hit. One fire alone, the Carlton Complex fire, burned more than 300,000 acres and destroyed dozens of homes. Charred remains of burned buildings can be seen from the roadside, not to mention hills turned black and brown. Thankfully, no one was directly killed. More than 25 helicopters remain deployed in the valley, and several thousand regional firefights continue to fight blazes in the county and now other areas of the state.

I will publish pictures of actual fire damage tomorrow, in Okanogan County and also in the town of Pateros, which lost more than a dozen homes to a fast-moving blaze in mid-July. I have never seen type of smoke cover we have now statewide as I saw the past few days throughout the entire state. (Click on each photo to see a large picture on a separate picture page.)

A life lived well together
I consider this portrait I took to be a classic portrayal of lifelong love and a true partnership. The picture does not lie.

I truly believe that pictures, in fact, do not lie. Pictures speak volumes about emotions, character, purpose, and relationships. This is one of my favorite portraits of two of my favorite people, of Luther and Gladys. RIP, Gladys. (Click on the picture to see the photograph on a separate picture page.)

Seattle industrial typology study
One of two views of ducts near the Ship Canal boat yards (taken July 2014).
One of two views of ducts near the Ship Canal boat yards (taken July 2014).

I have always been fascinated by the forms that our modern building systems display. Exhaust, air, heating, and cooling systems are about as basic systems as one finds, and they usually have a place of prominence on rooftops, unadorned and standing like metallic animals and sculptures. Bernd and Hilla Becher called these forms typologies and made a career highlighting them in their master prints and publications. Check them out if you have never heard of them. They, more than any photographers in a long while, have influenced how I see the world and how I think about the ways we construct our physical environment to suit our economic system. (Click on each photograph to see a larger photo on a separate picture page.)

Cherry pickers, Washington state
I took this photo in 1999 of cherry pickers who were living in the woods near Wenatchee.

Given that the fate of migrant children from Central America arriving at the United States’ southern border is now an international news story, I decided to dig up and publish some of my picture series taken in 1999, on cherry pickers and migrant workers in Washington state. The agricultural industry in Washington is staffed almost entirely by foreign-born labor to pick, harvest, and sort the many crops from cherries to apples to hops that make your local beer tasty. Some are workers who travel seasonally. Some are brought here under temporary permits, the H-2A visas. Make no mistake, the state’s economy would grind to a halt without these workers, and their work contributes to the wealth of this huge economic sector, which at last count in 2012 generated nearly $10 billion in the state.

When I took this photo, there was a housing crisis, and workers were camping on public lands, and efforts were launched to find affordable housing. These problems remain. Meanwhile, the debate over immigration and the fate of millions of undocumented workers continues. Here in Washington state, some of the workers will be authorized (they are being brought in from Jamaica, even). Others will be here without authorization. And nearly all of us who eat fruits and vegetables will be continue buying the low-cost produce picked by people why do hard work many U.S. citizens do not wish to do.

For more portrait photographs, please visit my portrait gallery on my web site. (Click on the photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Dark and light I found photographing tales from World War II
Taken in 2000, in Aarhus, Denmark.
Taken in 2000.

In 2000, I completed a photodocumentary project highlighting human rights abuses by the Nazis throughout Europe. For part of that project, I met some Danes who were involved in that country’s famous boat lift of its Jewish citizens to Sweden to escape being deported and murdered by the Nazis at death camps. It is one of the few positive stories from this incredibly sad, psychologically dark, and awful episode of human history. One of the couples I met, David and Lilian Birnbaum of Aarhus, Denmark, met in Sweden after they were successfully carried to temporary safety. Some recent exchanges I had from someone who knows them made me think about their incredible story again and how wonderful it was to have stumbled on such a bright tale from such an awful time. The other photo I am including is a sample from hundreds of photos I took at more than 20 death and concentration camps scattered across Europe. This one, Stutthof, is located about 35 kilometers east of Gdansk. It was a terrible place to those sent there. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Sitka National Historic Park totem poles

 

Taken in 1999.
Taken in 1999.
Taken in 1999.

The Sitka National Historic Park, in the beautiful southeast Alaska city of Sitka, features some of the finest examples of Tlingit totem carvings, old and new, in the world. It is also among my favorite sanctuaries in the world. I lived in Sitka for a summer in 1992 and visited this place several times a week. These photos were taken during a trip I took in 1999, now 15 years ago (wow). So many of these totems most certainly have aged since I photographed them. More examples of my Alaska photos can be found on my Alaska gallery. (Please click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Port of Seattle icon
A former cement kiln stands guard near the Port of Seattle (2014).

The Port of Seattle is surrounded by light and heavy industrial facilities, including a former cement kiln seen here. There are endless forms, shapes, and typologies to photograph and document in this area. I could spend days in these spaces and still never tell their story.

Looking down into the Red Dog Mine
The zinc and lead mine about 50 miles from the Chukchi sea is among the largest of its kind in the world. This picture was taken in 2008.
The Red Dog Mine is the largest mine in Alaska and has been at the center of a dispute for years, but production continues, and the market demand never tires of its metals.

The Red Dog Mine, in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough, is one of the world’s largest zinc and lead mines. It is owned and operated by Canada-based Teck Resources Ltd., one of Canada’s largest mine companies, which itself is now partially owned (17.5%) by the Chinese sovereign wealth fund called China Investment Corp. Teck partners with NANA, the Alaska Native Regional Corp., which provided rights to the land. The mine provides jobs to a remote and landlocked area with little or no economy outside of health care and government. Teck touts its 500 plus jobs and economic benefits for the region and local residents, though it is a major polluter, and the mine’s discharge of wastewater has been at the center of a years-long battle with residents of a small coastal village called Kivalina.

I visited Red Dog in 2008. It is an impressive site. I also have met some of the opponents of the mine. There are no easy answers here. I wrote a paper on the mine and examined its health impacts, and my paper largely agreed with a study done for the permitting (not enforceable) that the mine actually provides net health benefits to the region, such as good jobs and a stable economy, despite its other health impacts. Mining is not clean or simple, and the global economic system is dependent on it. Here is how the mine looked in 2008, prior to an application that sought to expand it, with the Aqqaluk proposal, which is basically an expanded mine of the current project. (And for the record, I am opposed to the planned Pebble Mine; I am not an advocate of party line thinking.)