byronwolfe.com

Everyday - now on the iPad!

I'm very excited to announce that Everyday: A Yearlong Photo Diary has just been released for the iPad. This link will take you to it at Apple's iTunes/iBook store where you can download a free abridged version, complete with a new foreword, the original introductory essay, and a small selection of the pictures. The full version is available for $3.99. I hope you'll explore the publication, and if you like it, provide feedback at the Apple bookstore. Most of all, please share it with your friends! I'm also working on versions in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.

It works on all iPads running iBooks 2.2 and looks spectacular on the most recent model with the retina display. It will not run on iPhones.

Why did I go back a redo something that was already complete? I've long thought about re-releasing the book in electronic format. Indeed, in 2004 my original proposal to Chronicle Books (the publisher of the hardbound copy) included an electronic version, but it was just too early in the e-book world for such a thing to find an audience.

But more importantly, it's been ten years (!) since I first started making daily pictures with the intent of sharing them with a wider audience as a book of narrative photographs. Back in 2002, the idea of making and sharing personal and daily pictures was uncommon. A decade ago, the photography and communication world was very different, well before digital cameras (and iPhones) became commonplace. Now we have ubiquitious picture-sharing sites, photo blogs, Facebook, and the wildly popular Instagram - all new and engaging ways to make and share photographs. I'm hoping the iPad edition of Everyday finds a home with this new audience, partly because they'll find something they like in the work, but also because so many people now participate in the practice of shared daily photography.

In many ways I think the electronic version of Everyday is a much better marriage of content and form than the original printed volume in that it's a closer realization of my original idea of a flowing visual narrative. What's more, every picture is presented in the same size so that significant details can now be seen. Captions are also included as my handwritten text, a subtle, but important change.

The book is published by One Tree Press - a new venture for me. I'll be partnering with artists and photographers to re-release their out-of-print physical volumes as e-books.

Byron 

"Reconstructing the View" book

I am pleased to announce the publication of Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe.

It includes essays on working methods and collaboration by photography curator Rebecca Senf, Norton Family Curator of Photography at the Phoenix Art Museum, and an essay by Stephen Pyne, Regents' Professor, Arizona State University, that provides a conceptual framework for understanding the history of the canyon.

Published by the University of California Press with the Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography. Hardcover, 208 pages.

Forewards by Director James Ballinger of the Phoenix Art Museum and Director Katharine Martinez of the Center for Creative Photography.

It is available directly from UC Press (direct link here) as well as fine book sellers such as PhotoEye (direct link here).

The Phoenix Art Museum gift shop currently has copies signed by all four contributors.

Byron

Overview

The following are brief overviews of many of my creative projects, individual and collaborative. Most are ongoing and are subject to changes and additions. Please follow the links within each posting (or at left) for more thorough examples.

Thanks for visiting, Byron

Eadweard Muybridge (aka Eduardo Santiago Muybridge) in Latin America

To see selections of this work in progress, follow this link.

In the dead of night in 1875, just after being acquitted for the murder of his wife's lover, Eadweard Muybridge boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's vessel The Honduras. He temporarily took on the name Eduardo Santiago Muybridge and spent a year photographing all along the Central American Pacific Coast with particular emphasis given to his travels in Guatemala and Panamá.

Read more... 

Reconstructing the View

To see a full catalog of our work on this project, please visit klettandwolfe.com.

Reconstructing the View is a collaboration with Mark Klett. 

A book (University of California Press and the Phoenix Art Museum, November 2012) and traveling exhibition are forthcoming.  The Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography produced this brochure for an exhibition we had in 2009. 

Above: Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, 2007. Details from the view at Point Sublime on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, based on the panoramic drawing by William Holmes (1882).

Medium: Digital inkjet print. Dimensions: 24”h x 96”w

Here is a brief video that describes the making of this piece.

Everyday

Everyday: A Yearlong Photo Diary

8 x 8 in: 272 pages with over 365 color photographs, hardcover, Chronicle Books, 2007.

Here's a pdf of the book's introduction that outlines my motivations and the context for trying to make at least one interesting picture every single day for an entire year.

Here's a QuickTime movie of pages from the iPad edition (25 pages, 3 megs).

I teach an everyday project in one of my own photography courses. Here's thehandout I use to introduce the assignment.

 

Domestic Excavations

To see selections of the work in progress, follow this link.

Since sometime around 1995, I've been making documents that relate to my experience as a husband, father, son, and grandson. It's a diverse collection of inherited photographs, my own pictures, scans of found objects, hand-drawn illustrations and diagrams, and writing.

Taken broadly, I called this work Domestic Excavations. It is organized into groups with titles such as "Artifacts of Imagination," "Artifacts of Experience," "Making History," and "Favorite Trees - some with fruit."

Above: Byron Wolfe, 2009. My grandfather and great grandfather planting young maple, c. 1969.

Medium: Digital inkjet print. Dimensions: 10”h x 20”w

 

Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers

For examples of work from this project, please follow this link to the KlettandWolfe.com website.

Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers by Mark Klett, Rebecca Solnit, and Byron Wolfe.

Hardcover, 144 pages. Trinity University Press.

Here's a QuickTime slideshow with several pages from the book (15 pages, 1.8 megabytes). 

Publisher's Description
Yosemite is a world-famous destination that has attracted celebrated photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams, along with environmental organizations, rock climbers, and tourists. Yosemite in Time puts this park in a new light with re-photographs of some of the most enduring images taken at Yosemite, and three essays by noted cultural critic Rebecca Solnit. The photographs and essays reconsider the iconic status of Yosemite in America's conception of wilderness, examining how the place was appropriated by its early Euro-American visitors and showing how our conceptions of landscape have altered and how land has changed — or not — over time. Arresting and incisive, Yosemite in Time is an intimate reconsideration of a park that millions of people hold dear.

-"Lovely and important." – San Francisco Chronicle

"A fresh look at Yosemite's iconic status" – Marin Magazine

"Beautifully rendered." – National Geographic Adventure

 

Four Views from Four Times and One Shoreline, Lake Tenaya

From left to right: Eadweard Muybridge, 1872, Ansel Adams, c. 1942, and Edward Weston, 1937.

Back panels: Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe, 2002. Swatting high-country mosquitoes at Lake Tenaya.

 

Campus Life

To see selections of this work, follow this link.

In the Spring of 2005 I was commissioned to create a series of pictures about the Chico State Arboretum which spans the entire 119 acre University Campus. A series of banners were made from the original images and a subsequent limited edition poster was produced (all designed by colleague Alan Rellaford).

Most of the pictures were made by placing found objects directly onto a flatbed scanner - a technique reminiscent of some of the earliest photochemical processes practiced by 19th century artists such as William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins. I added captions in my own handwriting to indicate the specimen's common and scientific names, and the place of discovery.

Here's a slideshow of the original work (11 pictures, 700 K). The prints are usually sized to 40" x 40", though I do make smaller versions. I have continued to gather specimens and ideas and intend to expand the scope of inquiry to consider more broadly the physical space and activities of our campus.

Pink Magnolia (Liriodendrum tulipfera) That showy tree behind Tehama Hall, 2/05

 

Third Views, Second Sights

Third Views, Second Sights book and DVD publication by Mark Klett, Kyle Bajakian, William Fox, Michael Marshall, Toshi Ueshina, and Byron Wolfe.

Third View project participants revisited the sites of historic western American landscape photographs. We made new photographs, kept a field diary of our travels, and collected materials useful in interpreting the scenes, change and the passage of time. The project work is disseminated with a book, an interactive DVD, a web site, and ongoing exhibitions.

Over the course of four years (1997 - 2000) the project revisited 109 historic landscape sites, all subjects of nineteenth-century American western survey photographs. The "rephotographs" were made from the originals’ vantage points with as much precision as possible. Every attempt was also made to duplicate the original photographs' lighting conditions, both in time of day and year.

Third View was created specifically to investigate changes that have occurred since the landscape sites were last photographed, a time period ranging from twenty to one hundred and thirty years. In most cases there are three photographs at each site, but Third View includes over a dozen sites that had not been rephotographed previously and in those cases there are only two views presented.

Here's a streaming QuickTime video (3:00 minutes, 15.3 megabytes) that takes you on a whirlwind tour of a small portion of the material on the interactive DVD.

The web site has animated rephotography of 19th century landscape photographs, downloadable pdfs of rephotographed sites, fieldnotes, and a bibliograpy. There's also an interactive simulation describing the basic tools and techniques we use when making a rephotograph.