Week 23: Dalton Rooney

The rotating gallery features the work of a young emerging photographer as well as an interview with him/her, and will change every Wednesday. The gallery is based off ‘collective curatorship’, where the photographer from week 1 chooses and interviews a photographer for week 2, week 2 chooses/interviews week 3, etc. There is only one stipulation to the process: Next weeks photographer has to be someone he/she has not had direct contact with yet. Ideally, this will take the gallery on a linked tour around the Internet, and exploring and unearthing new photographers as it goes.

This week, Lisa Scheer interviews landscape photographer Dalton Rooney.

Lisa Scheer: You’re a native of southern California now living in Brooklyn, New York.  I think of you primarily as a landscape photographer.  Tell me something about the evolution of your interest in photographing landscapes. Where does your affinity for the natural world come from?

Dalton Rooney: My interest in landscape photography is a fairly recent development. Most of my earliest work involved urban scenes, but over time I found myself gravitating more toward the undeveloped areas at the edge of the city. I began to extend that with more frequent trips out of town, and now I spend just about every weekend out looking for new areas to explore. At the moment I am very interested in the southern shore of Long Island. It is a pretty remarkable place and photographing it could be easily become a lifelong project.

At the same time, I have been thinking a lot about the formal and philosophical issues of the landscape, and how photography is an ideal medium for examining this. I have been, somewhat obsessively perhaps, studying the work of other landscape artists. Mostly photographers, but painters, sculptors, and printmakers too. The natural world has come to represent to me an unlimited combination of photographic possibilities.

Looking back now, I do think some of this interest can be attributed to growing up in southern California. I don’t think I appreciated the natural beauty of my surroundings at the time, but now it haunts me. I hope to go back and do some work there some day.

LS: I’ve read that Joel Sternfeld’s American Prospects reflected the influence of Dutch landscape painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. You’ve mentioned the influence of both Cezanne and and nineteenth-century landscape photographer Carleton Watkins on your web site. Can you be more specific about the impact of these artists on your work?

DR: Cezanne just blows me away. He is, in my mind, the most important figure in the history of landscape art. For a long time, I mainly appreciated his paintings as aesthetic objects—they have a wonderful physical presence. But as I began to look at the work more closely, specifically with respect to the view, they opened up to me in a way that no other artist’s work has. His perspective was so unique and powerful, and even to this day it is still quite challenging. Challenging yet beautiful—I guess that is the kind of work I would like to create as well.

Carleton Watkins is a recent discovery for me and I have really fallen in love with his work. He was working at a crucial moment in the history of photography and he clearly predicted a lot of what was to come. His photographs are so clean and precise, and feel so modern to me. I was in awe of the Yosemite triptych recently on display at MoMA, and am now quite intrigued by the possibilities of diptychs and triptychs. I have been thinking about experimenting with that format in the near future.

I could come up with a very long list of artists whose work I respect and admire. I sometimes struggle, however, with the point where inspiration ends and imitation begins. It can be difficult to sublimate those various references into something cohesive and representative of a personal vision and not just an extension of someone else’s work.

LS: You’ve mentioned an interest in photographing the southern shore of Long Island.  It’s part of your Outer Lands series, an examination of the landscape on the archipelago off the southern coast of New England. You’ve also taken a series of images over the years in Sheepshead Bay, on the outskirts of Brooklyn. There’s a remarkable stillness, a kind of reverence in these landscape studies. What’s the background story on this beautiful image?

DR: This image, and several others I have taken in Sheepshead Bay, were inspired by a series of mysterious objects I found along the shoreline. The first one was a black and white image that I took in 2008. Since then I have returned several times, and I always find something new. Often it begins with bits of ribbon, string, or cloth tied to trees, but other motifs have emerged: handmade wooden crosses, flowers and trees that have been transplanted in incongruous places, and small arrangements of seashells.

I have never figured out who is creating them or their motivation, but it is true that I approach them with a lot of reverence. There is no room for irony in these photographs. I find the subject absolutely captivating and try to reflect that beauty in these images.

LS: On weekends, you leave behind the highway and an urban environment to hike many miles into the wilderness. You’re often lugging a 4×5 view camera, a tripod, and enduring wind, cold, heat, insects and brambles. I’m assuming you’re alone. What’s the experience like physically, perceptually?  Tell me about this stunning image, for instance.

DR: Ha ha, I guess I am a glutton for punishment! I do carry a lot of equipment, often for a 8-10 hours at a time, and it is exhausting. I am often at the mercy of the elements. But I find something invigorating about the physical work. Somehow the exertion translates into a kind of mental clarity and focus that I find difficult to achieve otherwise.

The photograph with the deer was exactly one of those days. I had driven out to Fire Island one morning after a big snow. Cars are not allowed on most of Fire Island so I parked and started walking. I was out for at least 6-8 hours that day, if I remember, trudging through snow and sand, when this deer crossed the road in front of me and headed into the woods. I caught up to where the trail went in, quickly set up my camera, and waited. Sure enough, just a few seconds later, he popped his head out just long enough for me to take the photograph, and then disappeared again!

I’ve never been interested in traditional wildlife photography, hiding in the bushes with a 1000 millimeter lens. This felt much more like a mutual curiosity than voyeurism. But if this kind of opportunity presented itself again, I would definitely take it.

LS: Historically, natural landscapes have been photographed in black and white film. You work with both color and black and white film. I’m wondering how color film influences your approach to shooting landscapes.

DR: I’ve experimented with color photography from time to time, but I have been focusing on black and white for a few years now. I think that changed after seeing two wonderful shows here in New York City last fall. The first was Jem Southam’s Rockfalls of Normandy series at the Robert Mann gallery. The second was Joel Sternfeld’s Oxbow Archive at Luhring Augustine. Both had a profound effect on me, and after seeing them I knew that I finally had to jump with both feet into the world of color photography. It has also pushed me toward working with large format again.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I have found a steep learning curve in working with color film. I have gotten discouraged at times, but I keep going back and I am becoming more comfortable with the process. It is only now, six months in, that I am really happy with the results I am getting, and I am going back and re-processing a lot of work that didn’t look so good the first time around.

I find that I approach subjects differently in color than I do in black and white. The materials have different strengths, and now that I have a little bit more experience with color I think I am getting a feel for the kinds of images that work best. I find that I am drawn to bold, graphic compositions when working with black and white, but I am able to be more subtle when working with color and I enjoy the possibilities that are opened up by that.

LS: You shoot with a variety of equipment including a pinhole camera, an SX-70, a Hasselblad, and a 4×5 view camera.  Is there a current favorite?

DR: I am working almost exclusively with the 4×5 camera at the moment. I have jumped around a lot over the years, working with digital, a pinhole camera, the SX-70, a Holga… whatever I could get my hands on, basically. I love my Hasselblad, and am going to do some more black and white work with that camera later this summer.

I have had a love/hate relationship with large format over the years, but I think I am finally getting over my difficulties with the format and getting comfortable with it. There’s just a magical quality in working with a view camera and with negatives of that size. They capture the light in a way that nothing else does. I do want to give 8×10 a try some day but I’m not sure how well it would work for me considering the amount of hiking I do.

LS:  Stephen Shore commented in an interview that he believed the work created by most established artists came about as a “byproduct of their personal explorations,” not an effort to get a gallery show. I feel this way about your landscape work, that it’s an exploration of ideas. A theme in Robert Adams’s pictures is this kind of inevitable sadness about the corruption of the land. In the process of working on a series, are there any stories or themes that emerge as a result? Or is it perhaps too early to comment?

DR: I think the main thing I take away from these latest photographs is the pure joy of exploration. Exploration both in the physical sense, of experiencing the world and of being a part of it, as well as in a philosophical sense. I hope that comes across when others look at the pictures, too.

I have been working on this series for six months now and am just starting to get my bearings. It is interesting for me to observe how differently I perceive the project now than I did when I first started. I do want to open the series up beyond the natural landscape. I am not trying to perpetuate a vision of a perfect world with these photographs; it is very clear to me that there are a lot of negative issues that need to be acknowledged. My concern is that it is handled in an organic way, and not come across as heavy-handed or preachy.

 But yes, it is very early to make any kind of definitive statement about this current series. I have a feeling that I will be working on it for a very long time, and smaller projects will come and go in the meantime, most likely.


LS: I think your recent series from Sicily is stunning.  You processed and printed these images, called “palladiotypes.” Tell me a little about the process.

DR: Thank you! Yes, I envisioned the series as being printed this way from the very beginning. I had seen the work of photographer Beth Dow, who prints her wonderful landscapes in platinum, at Jen Bekman and became intrigued with the process. After studying up on it a bit I realized that the images from Sicily would be a perfect chance to learn and apply the technique.

It’s a fairly labor intensive process. This would be a good opportunity to thank Keith Taylor and Doug Schwab, both of whom helped me learn how to do it. Because platinum and palladium prints are contact printed, I first enlarge the negatives digitally, which involves scanning and retouching the images in Photoshop, and then printing them onto transparency film. That sounds so simple, but it actually took me more than a month to get it right! Then I coat the paper with a light sensitive platinum/palladium emulsion and contact print the photographs under a strong UV light.

Although the more common term is “platinum print” or platinotype, many if not most platinum prints are a combination of platinum and palladium. They are similar chemicals which produce slightly different tonal characteristics. I made several pure palladium prints (palladiotypes) while I was learning the process, but have now settled on a mixture of the two. I use this same technique with my other black and white landscapes and really love it.
LS: Your photos have been featured online in both Flak Photo and the Humble Arts Foundation. You’re listed in the recent catalogue of emerging photographers published by the Humble Arts Foundation. Any interesting photo projects or shows in the future?

DR: I am taking my time in regards to showing my work. Right now the most important thing to me is just keeping my focus on this current series. That said, I occasionally submit work to juried shows and was happy to have some work in a group show at Wall Space in Seattle last winter. I try to submit at least a few times a year so maybe something else will come up down the line.

I’ve also been selling work on my web site and have been doing pretty well with it. I will probably continue doing that, as it helps fund my ongoing work and it has been a great way to connect with people.

LS: Dalton, is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

DR: Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this process. I am a big fan of your work, and sitting down to answer these questions did force me to articulate my thoughts about my own work in a way I that I usually don’t.

LS:  Thanks for your time.