Edition Announcement #293 - Eirik Johnson

Behind the Bay City Log Sorting Yard, Cosmopolis, Washington by Eirik Johnson
8"x10" ($20) | 11"x14" ($50) | 16"x20" ($200) | 24"x30" ($1000)

Good day collectors, it's Sara again. Jen's been fighting off a flu of sorts that seems to be taking one 20x200-er down at a time. She'll be back soon, I promise. In the meantime, I have a new photograph from an artist we've long admired from afar.

I was first drawn to Eirik Johnson's photography, and in particular, the body of work that Behind the Bay City Log Sorting Yard, Cosmopolis, Washington comes from—and which is also a book, titled Sawdust Mountain—because it was warmly familiar. No where else have I lived are the culture and economy so entwined with and dependent on natural resources as in the Pacific Northwest. Timber and salmon define the region as much as the Chrysler and Empire State buildings distinguish New York's skyline. No where else are these relationships so visible.

On any venture outside of the small port cities that dot Washington's waterfronts, you will inevitably meet a truck over-loaded and tipsy with felled timber and see acres of stumps supplanted with new saplings. BBQs are nearly never absent of salmon and heading upriver to witness the spawning season is a right of passage. My alma mater maintains The Logger as our mascot, as we are generously supported by funds from a corporate champion of "innovative forest products." The blue-turning-white collar town that the campus is nestled in is occasionally graced by the peculiar aroma of the pulp plants that reside along the industrial tide flats.

Johnson's photographs acknowledge these connections—and further, make them visceral. In Behind the Bay City Log Sorting Yard, Cosmopolis, Washington, a single-family home is ceaselessly blasted by the floodlights of the lumber yard, literally casting an eerie glow on what it would be like to live here and to hear the constant hum and buzz of chopping and sorting. Two towering trees, on the right, oppose dozens of their kind, defiled in piles on the left. Without these little hints, this image could have been taken anywhere else that industry has invaded remote, rural or domestic corners. Other evidence is less specific: calla lilies and a kiddie swimming pool abut the house, implying a defiant sweetness of the family that lives here. The grass appears bone-dry as if the light has leached the life from it. As in Johnson's other photographs, the lush colors are unsettlingly seductive.

To see more of the work, pick up a copy of Sawdust Mountain from Aperture. They're in the midst of a summer sale; the $50 price tag has been slashed to a steal of $35, for a limited time (much of their inventory is 30% off). I do recommend you get one to accompany your print. (If you had submitted your work to JBP's Hey, Hot Shot! photography competition by now, you would have been in the running to win a slew of books donated by HHS! panelist Lesley Martin from Aperture, including Eirik's. It's not too late to enter now though, see the competition site for more details; the opportunities for photographers are unparalleled!)

The pages of Sawdust Mountain are matte and muted, much like the water-infused light that soaks the Northwest. (Our print, like Eirik's other prints has a warm, luster surface.) The edges of the cover and back are left unbound, exposing the pulpy skeleton of the book. Holding this object is a light reminder that we are all, everywhere else, somewhat complicit in the taking of the trees that grace the cover. Just what we are able to do about it is the question that remains unanswered.

More photography featuring the American West: