Luceo Images

On the Road: Guess the Photographer II

Luceo Images — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:52:18 +0000

Well, we’re on the road again for Few and Far Between–all six of us this time, traveling through the Rust Belt. We had a guessing game on our last group trip for this project last summer and it was a huge hit with you all so we thought we’d do it again!

So, your job, dear guesser, is to guess who took each photograph in this post. List them in a comment below in the order you think they appear. Your options are David Walter Banks, Kendrick Brinson, Matt Eich, Kevin German, Daryl Peveto and Matt Slaby. Whoever guesses the correct name order first gets a souvenir from the road! Good luck!

From the Archive

Kevin German — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:20:48 +0000

From the Archive is a regular column that features one image from our archive and appears every Thursday. LUCEO Images has a thorough group archive (keyword search bar, top right) and it can be at the LUCEO Image Archive.

This week we are featuring an archive image taken by Kevin German in Vietnam.
About This Image:

“When you begin to live in a place long enough, you tend to see the same things year-after-year. When I worked in newspapers, I tended to let that get to me. I would grow slightly bitter at the thought of photographing another festival or county fair that I had done previously. The photographs would be hard to find because I would make them hard to find.

I have lived in Vietnam for four years now. The longest I have lived any where since college. Yet I am still often wide-eyed at the situations that present themselves here.

This particular photograph just is a basic moment. But the situation has stayed with me for some time now. I was photographing at a school for the deaf in central Vietnam for a NGO. In this school the boys and girls have separate living quarters. Every morning they prepare for their studies by showering and getting cleaned up. They squat in a line and brush their teeth. They help each other shampoo their hair with a garden hose. And they hang up laundry to dry throughout the day.

It’s a basic daily chore but presented to me in such a unique way. And it all goes on around you like children playing on playground. It’s deeply satisfying visually.” – Kevin German

To view the full edit from this shoot or to license this image, please visit the LUCEO Images Archive >>

Grim Sleeper for TIME Magazine -Part II

Matt Slaby — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:29:32 +0000

Sometimes, when I think there is potential for different formats to say different things about a particular story, I go ahead and shoot them both and see where things fall as the piece moves along. For the Grim Sleeper work, there was a strong thematic reason to shoot Polaroids: the alleged killer catalogued hundreds of women using a Polaroid camera. Many of those women were among the dead who turned up discarded in alleys over the killer’s three-decade murder spree. The original post –complete with the digital format the magazine ultimately went with –is available here: http://luceoimages.com/2012/01/grim-sleeper-for-time-magazine-part-i/ If you’re unfamiliar with the story, you can get a little more background by reading it. Captions for each image appear in sequence below each picture.

Pictured Above: Lonnie Franklin’s house in South Los Angeles. Police allege that Franklin is responsible for a string of murders of mostly young women over a thirty year span of time. Franklin was linked to the crimes through familial DNA, a controversial and new forensics technique that allows investigators to search for partial DNA matches rather than direct ones. After Franklin’s arrest, police discovered a trove of Polaroid photographs of victims they believe Franklin killed.

The alley where 15 year-old Princess Berthomieux’s body was discovered. She had been strangled and discarded in the shrubs and was discovered by passersby several days after being killed. Berthomieux is believed to be one of Franklin’s later victims, having been killed sometime in early March of 2001. The alley is just blocks from Franklin’s home in South Los Angeles.

Enietra Margette Washington, survivor. Washington survived an attack by the Grim Sleeper after being shot in the chest and thrown from a car into the middle of a residential intersection. She crawled to a friend’s porch and waited nearly an hour for help to arrive. Washington has identified Lonnie Franklin as the man who shot her.

A discarded doll rests among debris in an alley where Debra Jackson’s body was discovered in 1985. Jackson is the Grim Sleeper’s first known victim; she was shot three times in the chest. Three years passed in the wake of her murder before ballistics results indicated that a larger string of murders was occurring.

Grafitti marks he exact spot in the alley where Barbara Ware’s body was discovered in 1987. Police allege that Franklin called 911 himself to report the body being dumped. The caller explains that someone “threw her out … the only thing that’s hanging out of ‘dis … like he threw a gas tank on top of her and, uh … and, uh only thing you can see out is her feet.” Ware was discovered sandwiched among auto parts, brush, and trash.

Flowers mark the approximate spot where 18 year-old Alicia Alexander’s body was discovered in September of 1988. Alexander is thought to be Franklin’s eigth victim, however police are unable to affix a precise count and believe that other victims may be buried along with the city’s trash in one of Los Angeles’ dumps. Several women in Franklin’s Polaroid collection have yet to be identified or located; Franklin worked as a trash collector in these very same alleys during the 1980s.

Detective Dennis Kilcoyne and Jill Spriggs. Kilcoyne took on the role of Lead Detective on the Grim Sleeper case and is credited with cracking the investigation after it remained unsolved for decades. Spriggs is the chief of the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Forensic Services. She oversees the laboratory which helped match Franklin to the Grim Sleeper murders using familial DNA.

From the Archive

Luceo Images — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:38:56 +0000

This week we are featuring an archive image taken by Atlanta photographer Kendrick Brinson in Red Cloud, Nebraska.

About This Image:

“As I watch LUCEO’s group endeavor Few and Far Between grow, I’m reminded of our first trip for the project. In May 2010, Matt Slaby, David Walter Banks and I met in Lebanon, Kansas to explore this idea of documenting small town America. I’d originally brought up the idea to David in terms of the two of us exploring small towns in Georgia and the idea expanded from there. In the past year and a half, the idea has certainly expanded beyond those initial ideas and we’ve been on numerous stops in pairs and in groups of three and then last summer five of us drove across Wyoming in an RV for our first largest group, multi-town endeavor yet.

Well, our second large group trip–this time with all six members of LUCEO–is next week. We will cross the rust belt as a team stopping in small town after small town night after night. We will gather contacts, images, video, sounds from each of these towns and gather as a group each night to discuss our days and help each other edit.

When I left my staff job at a newspaper, what I feared I would miss most was the sense of a photographic community. I’m so fortunate to have found that with LUCEO. Stay tuned for updates from the road January 30-February 9, 2012.” -Kendrick Brinson

Caption:

“People stand in the lobby of the Green Acres Motel in Red Cloud, Nebraska.”

To view the full edit from this shoot or to license this image, please visit the LUCEO Images Archive >>

Grim Sleeper for TIME Magazine -Part I

Matt Slaby — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:29:59 +0000

It’s admittedly a strange photograph to lead with. It’s empty, it’s bleak, and there is definitely no moment to speak of. But the space itself is a portrait of a place that bears a certain significance to the story it’s hooked to. The pile of rubbish marks the exact spot where Lachrica Jefferson’s body was discovered in South Los Angeles in 1988.

These kinds of stories have become a larger and larger staple of what I’ve been shooting over the past couple of years. Typically, the main subjects are inaccessible for one reason or another though the publication still requires visuals to supplement the narrative. Assignments like this can be challenging because the benefit of expression and moment are largely done away with. Instead, the photographs have to be conceptual, consistent, and anchored to something that may not be readily available upon first inspection. The viewer may (dare I say it) have to do a little reading to get to the meat of the story.

Given the hurdles posed by these kinds of assignments, I suppose they may seem a little less glamorous than the more traditional “front row to history” approach to photojournalism. It’s not always sexy, not always fast-paced, and isn’t exactly the kind of photography I thought I’d be doing when I started thinking seriously about this endeavor as my career.

That said, I absolutely love shooting this kind of work. It’s challenging and requires a bit of visual problem solving that I find really engaging and rewarding.

Lachrica Jefferson is just one of a string of women who were shot and strangled by a single killer dubbed the Grim Sleeper in South Los Angeles over a 30 year period. Most of them were tossed out along with the trash within a mile or two of where the alleged killer lived with his wife and children. After decades without any significant leads, Police were able to tie the killings to Lonnie Franklin, a former sanitation worker and sometimes auto mechanic, by searching for familial links in California’s DNA database. Familial DNA is a controversial and new forensics technique that allows investigators to search for partial DNA matches rather than direct ones. In Franklin’s case, investigators found a partial match through his son allowing them to hone in on Franklin.

During the search of Franklin’s home, Police discovered a trove of evidence including a gun matching the one used in the killings and hundreds of Polaroid photographs of women, many of whom were among the list of bodies attributed to the Grim Sleeper.

Police allege that Franklin preyed on women who frequented the prostitution and crack-addled streets that defined South Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Based on the accounts of one of his surviving victims, it is believed Franklin invited his victims into his car before sexually assaulting and killing them in the passenger seat of his orange Pinto. Most of his known victims were hastily discarded in alleyways, stuffed in bags or covered over with trash just blocks from his home. Dead women turned up for nearly 30 years until police were finally able to tie Franklin to the killings through DNA evidence.

From a visual perspective, the challenge posed by this story is that most of the main characters are dead, Franklin is locked in jail waiting for trial, and the actual scientific process of linking a suspect through familial DNA is as visually deserted as the computer screen that runs the match algorithms. That said, the story had a few building blocks to work with. First, Franklin had a peculiar obsession with documenting the women he allegedly victimized. He catalogued pictures he made of them using a Polaroid camera and kept them in his garage. Second, the killer’s modus operandi for disposing of bodies was relatively unceremonious. The Grim Sleeper left them in the same alleys that Franklin worked while picking up garbage as a sanitation worker.

Based on Franklin’s own alleged compulsion to catalogue his victims, I worked with the magazine to develop a similar, parallel concept to catalogue the spaces where he discarded them. The idea was to use a noir-ish aesthetic to make a large portrait of the places where the killer operated and to showcase exactly how open and flagrant the Grim Sleeper was in disposing of his dead: he simply put them out with the trash. The resulting layout spanned several pages and included the concept-driven images of the murder scenes interspersed with photographs of some of the key players involved in cracking the case.

If you’re a TIME subscriber, you can also view the article, here. It’s a really nice piece written by Terry McCarthy that examines the case by looking at the controversial familial DNA method used to nab the killer. If you do subscribe, it’s worth the read.

A plane on final approach to LAX flies over South Los Angeles. The constant stream of air traffic flies day and night over the alleys and streets where the Grim Sleeper’s crimes were perpetrated.

GPS coordinates for the location where Alicia Alexander’s body was dicovered. Most of the located bodies were dumped in alleys within two miles of Lonnie Franklin’s home in South Los Angeles.

The intersection where Enietra Margette Washington was dumped after being shot by the Grim Sleeper in 1988. Washington survived the attack by crawling from the intersection to a friend’s house and waiting for help. She is one of two women believed to have survived an attack by the Grim Sleeper.

A billboard visible from the alley where Barbara Ware’s body was discovered in 1987.

The Hernandez family plays near the site where Barbara Ware’s body was discovered in 1987.

Murder victims, including those killed by the Grim Sleeper, on a bulletin board in the California Crime Laboratory in Richmond, California. The lab is home to CAL DNA, a program that tracks DNA profiles of convicted felons. The lab ultimately linked Franklin to the murders by expanding their search to include close family relations of the killer. Franklin’s son, who had been arrested for an unrelated felony, scored a hit as a partial match and ultimately led investigators to Franklin himself.

The alley where 18 year-old Alicia Alexander’s body was discovered in September of 1988. Alexander is thought to be Franklin’s eigth victim, however police are unable to affix a precise count and believe that other victims may be buried along with the city’s trash in one of Los Angeles’ dumps. Several women in Franklin’s Polaroid collection have yet to be identified or located; Franklin worked as a trash collector in these very same alleys during the 1980s.

A plane flies over South Los Angeles. The constant stream of air traffic from LAX flies day and night over the alleys and streets where the Grim Sleeper’s crimes were perpetrated.

Lonnie Franklin’s house in South Los Angeles. Police allege that Franklin is responsible for a string of murders of mostly young women over a thirty year span of time. Franklin was linked to the crimes through familial DNA, a controversial and new forensics technique that allows investigators to search for partial DNA matches rather than direct ones. After Franklin’s arrest, police discovered a trove of Polaroid photographs of victims they believe Franklin killed.

Detective Dennis Kilcoyne. Kilcoyne took on the role of Lead Detective on the Grim Sleeper case and is credited with cracking the investigation after it remained unsolved for decades.

Respite Services for AARP Bulletin

Kendrick Brinson — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:29:01 +0000

I headed to Macon in December to photograph Lola and Etta, a mother and daughter. Lola is 91 and lives alone and resists living in an assisted living home; luckily, her daughter Etta is able to visit and check on her several times a week. The two are fortunate to have assistance through the Home and Community Based Services respite program, which could lose funding.

I know the program is a huge help and offers the pair peace of mind. To read the story and find out more about this state program, head here.

The Fourth Wall for U.S. News & World Report

David Walter Banks — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:06:01 +0000

Towards the end of last year I was assigned by a good friend and editor at U.S. News & World Report to photograph Revolutionary War Field Days in historic Camden, South Carolina. The annual event is held each November and centers around the Southern Campaign of the war, with a specific focus on the Battle of Camden and the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill. One of my favorite byproducts of my essay, ‘The Fourth Wall’ is that it has made me come to mind with a handful of editors when a story relates to fantasy, or altered reality.

This assignment did not focus on any one aspect or character or even this particular reenactment, but as an illustration for section title pages in the magazine’s Revolutionary War special, which just hit newsstands. This left me free to just wander, meet people, and draw towards what interested me visually. As someone who likes to look for the surreal in the everyday, I find within myself an organic kinship with folks like these who take that idea to the next level.

I also have a natural curiosity in the broad sense of nearly everything. This is a huge factor and draw for me to be part of the photographic profession. The camera allows me to ask questions of strangers, and creates in them a natural propensity to offer information about their knowledge, lives and ideas. I had at least five different experiences on this shoot where subjects would apologize for telling me too much about themselves. It always gives me a little chuckle inside as I reassure them that I wouldn’t be speaking with them if I wasn’t interested. I also tend to talk a bit too much, so it’s a healthy practice for me to just spend time listening and absorbing.

—————————————————

See more from the project here: The Fourth Wall

The project title, ‘The Fourth Wall’, is derived from the theatrical term for the invisible barrier that separates the audience from the fictional characters on stage. More often, the phrase is used in reference to breaking that wall down.

As children with wild imaginations, we are taught that the world is separated into reality and fantasy, fiction and non-fiction. These early teachings are perhaps what plant the seeds of curiosity in pretending we are in a place or time that we are not. In the 1950s, Walt Disney fueled this fire when he set out to create a fantasy world that was designed and marketed not just to children, but adults as well, paving the way for more like it. The Fourth Wall explores these altered theatrical realities and our interaction and fascination with them.

No Child Left Behind for TIME

Matt Eich — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:05:11 +0000

Shortly before the holidays this year I was sent to Herndon, Virginia by TIME to make images of Rachel Carson Middle School for an article about the continued impact of the No Child Left Behind policy, ten years after its implementation. Having never really attended an elementary school like this, the whole experience was unique for me. LUCEO Partner Tyler Strickland came along as an assistant and audio specialist and we spent most of the day surrounded by an incredibly bright and energetic group of kids. Every few minutes we would jump from music to science to math tutoring or Japanese class. We had a blast. (...)
Read the rest of No Child Left Behind for TIME (134 words)

From the Archive

Luceo Images — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:46:29 +0000

This week we are featuring an archive image taken while on the road in southern New Mexico by Matt Slaby.

About This Photo:

“I have a favorite rental car; it’s a minivan. I’m not embarrassed in the least to say it either. The seats fold completely flat in the back and it makes a great mobile tent. More importantly, the design of the rear and side facing windows offer a frame which I really enjoy shooting through. After discovering them by accident while sleeping in the rental during a long drive through Wyoming one night, I looked up to see that the world around me could be focused through the glass as though I were viewing it from the quiet of some terrestrial diving bell. The pictures turned into a study of iconography of the Western American landscape and its fauna; people and places readily identifiable and framed through the modern accouterments of space-aged shaped plastic and steel. I shoot like this a lot, becoming hyper-focused on a particular theme or style, cataloguing things to show in series.

“This particular frame comes from a short road trip I took between two assignments. The first assignment was for AARP and called for portraits of election workers and the electorate they served to be shot on election day through the windows of this car. It was a welcome challenge and a great excuse to talk the rental car company into holding onto my favorite ride for the day. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a guaranteed vehicle, so after working on the assignment, I held on to the car for the trip in order to continue shooting this body of work.

“After a long, circuitous route through southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, I wandered into Alamogordo, a town near the White Sands National Monument. I made my way to the sands, hoping for something to unfold that would showcase the landscape in all of its weird splendor. One of the biggest challenges presented by photographing through car windows is that the camera body essentially becomes the entire vehicle. It has to be maneuvered and re-maneuvered to make the composition. To anyone watching, it looks strange. I have to move the car, climb into the back, approximate my frame, get back into the driver’s seat, and make adjustments to where the car is parked. This process is repeated until the frame looks right from the back.

“As I pulled into one of the picnic loops inside of the dunes, I noticed this very colorful group of people walking back towards me from on top of the furthest dune. I set out to situate the car before the got too close and, eventually, made a short string of frames as the group drew closer and walked back to their car.

“The frame was one of the ones included in LUCEO’s recent Greater Than The Sum show and the purchaser of the piece told me that he thought it was what the world would look like from an alien spacecraft. I have to say, I couldn’t have been happier with that assessment. It’s exactly how it felt to me, too.” -Matt Slaby

Caption:

Tourists return from a trip up the dunes at the White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The dunes are characteristically crystalline and appear almost as drifts of snow. It is composed of mostly gypsum rock.

To view the full edit from this shoot or to license this image, please visit the LUCEO Image Archive >>

Dental Clinic for The Chronicle of Higher Education

Kendrick Brinson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:51:26 +0000

Dental hygiene students examine patients in the Georgia Perimeter College’s Dunwoody Campus Dental Clinic in Dunwoody, Georgia October 6, 2011. The clinic is four days a week and there are 18 units that are often full of patients during the clinics.

I couldn’t show patients’ faces for this story but had to show how busy the clinic was in terms of the current economic client, which was an interesting challenge.

The Vampire Diaries for Entertainment Weekly

Kendrick Brinson — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 17:56:26 +0000

**DO NOT TAKE THESE IMAGES AND PUT THEM ANYWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM LUCEO IMAGES. THESE IMAGES ARE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT.**

I got to spend the day on the amazing sets of The Vampire Diaries while they filmed the season three premiere of the show. I’ve never actually seen an episode of the show, though now my curiosity is piqued.

My job was to follow the lead actors on set and just shoot for the day, which was awesome. I tagged along with Nina Dobrev, who plays Elena Gilbert, and Ian Somerhalder, who plays Damon Salvatore. I didn’t get to see any fangs or blood, but was in absolute awe over the immaculate sets and the amazing attention to detail the props team took–from the rooms (which each had four walls and ceilings, though they were housed in an enormous warehouse), to the dust and paint drops on an old paint can in a corner, to the hundreds year old books bought from collectors. I had no clue that so much thought went into the tiny details all over a set.

Both Ian and Nina were gracious (Nina even gave me a personal tour of some of the sets) and I could tell they have a lot of fun with what they do.

And for those curious, no, I wasn’t bitten. Though I did receive a kiss on the hand by a very polite vampire.

To see more images from this shoot: click here.

From the Archive

Luceo Images — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:07:48 +0000

Greater Than The Sum Catalogue Editions #51-100

Luceo Images — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:59 +0000

GREATER THAN THE SUM
LUCEO Group Exhibition
25 CPW Gallery, New York
January 2012
52pp.
Black and White and Color Original Collaged Images
8.5 x 11″ plus 6 Full Gatefolds
Edition: 200

DESCRIPTION
Designed by LUCEO PRESS and printed by famed LA print house Paper Chase, the images are printed on heavy 100# FSC certified paper with crisp, gorgeous reproductions. Each edition contains 6 hand-cut gatefolds that capture a selection of the exhibition’s wall-length pieces. The cover is black chipboard with foil die-cut imprinted text. Each copy comes with both a Digital Download and a QR Code to access the exhibition’s custom soundscape. Each limited edition catalogue includes:

+ Foreword, including the exhibition statement
+ 6 Full Gatefolds
+ Select Exhibition Reproductions
+ Each Edition Hand Numbered
+ QR Code to download original Soundscape, DIN

All pre-sale editions ship signed by all six LUCEO photographers.

PRODUCT DETAILS
Title: Greater Than The Sum
Format: Black Chipboard Cover, w/ Custom Foil Imprinted Text
Pages: 52, Including 6 Full Gatefolds
Size: 8.5″ x 11″
Publisher: LUCEO PRESS
Publication Date: January 2012
Printer: PaperChase
Edition: 200, Each Copy is Numbered and Editioned
Bonus Material: Digital Download of Tyler Strickland’s Original Soundscape for the Exhibition

PRICING
Signed pre-sale issues #1-50 are available for a limited time for $50, a $5 savings from the listed price, plus shipping and handling. Shipping is available worldwide. Purchased editions are also available to be picked up on the night of the exhibition.

FAQs
Is shipping included?
Shipping and handling is added when you check out, with a variety of options for both national and international shipping.

Can I pick up my copy at the show?
Yes. We’d love to see you there and would be happy to hold your pre-sale copy for pick-up.

Will other copies be signed?
LUCEO only guarantees that pre-sale issues will be signed by all six photographers. Any regular issues sold outside of the pre-sale will ship unsigned and will be left to the buyer to solicit signatures from each photographer.

When will my copy arrive?
Pre-sale copies will be signed and shipped on or after January 14th. Transit times vary depending on locale.

How many copies are available?
Greater Than The Sum is a limited press run of 200.

Other questions?
Please direct further question to editions@luceoimages.com

Buy Your LUCEO CUT, Exhibition January 13

Luceo Images — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:37 +0000

Above is the full 163′ run of the exhibition. Use the red slider to view the exhibition.

GREATER THAN THE SUM

LUCEO Group Exhibition 25 CPW Gallery, New York January 13, 2012 Breaking from tradition, our new exhibition Greater Than The Sum combines a broad curation of each our photographers work into one 163′ run that spans the entire gallery. Rather than selling individual prints, we are selling CUTS, which give our guests the opportunity to hand cut a 24×24″ section of the print they most want.

Here’s How It Works:

Paper: Epson Somerset Velvet 255 gsm 100% Cotton Rag Ink: Epson UltraChrome K3 8 Color Pigment Ink Size: Select Up to 24×24″ All prints are printed to exacting archival standards, signed, editioned, and authenticated by all six LUCEO photographers.

FAQs

How do I guarantee I get the portion of the show that I want? Purchasing the earlier CUTS (positions, 1, 2, 3, for example.) offer you a better chance at the section of print you want. Later CUTS (such as positions 46, 47, 48) allow fewer options, but more opportunities for surprise.

I can’t be there the night of the show; can I still purchase a cut? No problem. We’re providing a guest-cutter who is ready, and willing to step up for you and make a surprise selection. Our stand-in has excellent taste, so you are in good hands. You can also choose to send your own representative instead. If you elect to have our stand-in cut on your behalf (or you do not show up the night of the show), we will be pleased to package and ship your cut to your provided shipping address.

What are the print specifications? CUTS are a continuous 24” in length by 24” in height. Fragmented CUTS are a total of 24” in length by 24” in height. All prints are printed on Epson Somerset Velvet 255 gsm 100% Cotton Rag with Epson UltraChrome K3 ink to exacting archival specifications.

I want to frame my print; will there be sufficient margin space to accommodate framing? Yes. There will be a 2″ margin of (white) space on the top and bottom of each cut. As the CUTS will be made from continuous strips, the printed image will span to the edges on either side. How will cuts be made? You will make cuts live at the show with a pair of scissors. Cuts must be vertical and straight. Cutters may take no more than 24” of print from the wall.

More questions? Email editions@luceoimages.com

More FAQ

Few and Far Between: Matt Slaby

Matt Slaby — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:39:23 +0000

GPS could well be the death of adventure. Sure, there’s something to be said for its utility as a homing device for the lost, rushed, and wayward souls, but the fact of the matter is that uncertainty is at the heart of its definition. The thesaurus, impartial to euphemisms that soften meaning, lists ‘hazard’ as one of its sibling words. As in “to hazard a trip” or to intentionally place something in the face of the danger. It follows, as I once heard Yvon Chouinard explain, that adventure requires risk.

Risk, of course, is a beast who is not easily cornered. It evinces the obvious connotations of threats to one’s physical integrity and is, perhaps, why we are so drawn to the Last Action Hero-styled notion that the real adventurer is one without concern for their own mortality. This is, most certainly, not a trait shared by thousands of GPS aficionados presently searching for (and driving to) the nearest Starbucks.

Fast forward to Few and Far Between, a trip formulated by the idea that somewhere out there in the great interior of America, there could be a trip waiting to be hazarded, a line put down on the map that doesn’t track the fastest or most efficient routes from the proverbial Point A to its determinate Point B. The great risk of circuitous meandering is the possibility of nothing, that each bright blip on the map yields an opposing visual darkness. There is something deeply Dantean and futile about the prospect of wandering around blind, bumping into obstacle after obstacle without latching on to something worth the effort. Futility is a primal fear because it drags into clear consciousness the notion that, ultimately, faced with the certainty of death, the actions of our lives risk meaninglessness.

The corollary, which, incidentally, is the conclusion that I prefer, is that there is as much reason to ignore the directions given by the GPS as there is to follow them. After all, no matter how that damn machine routes us, none of us are really going to Starbucks.

That is why I prefer to bump around in my blindfold.

A taxidermist introduced me to Bill Kenworthy. I had wandered into the shop where he worked and spotted him pinning hides to their forms, brushing back the hairs on the husked animals for their eager owners to display. I only mention the taxidermist because, without him, there would be no Kenworthy. After photographing the taxidermist plying his trade for several hours, we got to talking about the bigger idea of the project that LUCEO had charted for itself: illustrating a changing rural America by focussing on people who embody the kind of resourcefulness required to simply make their lives work.

Enter Kenworthy. He doesn’t readily share his age, but his manic enthusiasm for his dreams makes me think that there’s a teenager hiding under his hat. He’s a mineral prospector, a man who can turn rocks into the makings of a civilized life, a house, a camper, clothing, food, and an impressive and personal souvenir collection of the departed country star Jim Reeves. He is the adventurer of the sort that I admire, a person without a need for a GPS that would serve only to point him away from his own dreams. Personally, I’ve never understood why our collective preference is for those who only risk life and limb. To me, the real adventurer risks absurdity for some kind of greater spiritual payoff. There is a certain kind of courage in that and something that I take comfort in. And, for me, satisfied the purpose for the trip in the first place.

***

To see an edit of this project, visit the Few and Far Between gallery >>
To see how we are applying Few &amp;amp; Far Between to our clients need, visit theCase Study in our Commercial section>>
To view the West Travelogue, visit the LUCEO STORE >>
For more information on the project, visit More Than a Roadtrip on The New York Times Lens Blog >>
For past stories from this project, you can see posts by Matt Eich, David Walter Banks, Daryl Peveto andKendrick Brinson.