The Expo section of Monocle’s February issue features a story that I worked on in Charleston, S.C. at The American College of the Building Arts. It was a really fun story to work on. The setting was beautiful, the students and professors were kind and welcoming and the end layout is fantastic. Monocle put together an audio piece for the story with images from the shoot (with very tight crops).
Riding Out the Summer is included in The Journal’s zine section of their latest issue. There are still a couple stacks of booklets left. You can pick up a copy here or buy me a couple beers.
The latest issue of Print Magazine is out now with a photo that I shot of Jennifer Daniel for a Q+A, and below is an outtake from the shoot. Jennifer is awesome and hilarious. She brought lots of gold things, including a fanny pack and also a fake butt – it was a really fun shoot.
North American Beard and Moustache Contest, Bremerton, Wa., 2008.
Keep the season in mind and you’ll make a easy a guess at who the above beard contestant dressed as for the competition. In 2008, during an internship at the Seattle Times, I photographed the North American Beard and Moustache Contest. It was awesome. The nicest people came together to dress up, drink beer and enjoy themselves. My facial hair was far inferior to the competitors, so I bought some fake moustaches to keep pace. I still have one in my wallet. Happy holidays!!
The new issue of RESPECT. is out and features some images I shot of Big Sean. Huge thanks to Andy Spear for giving me a hand on the shoot.
In the Wake opened at 707 Gallery in Downtown Pittsburgh just after Thanksgiving. It’ll be up through New Year’s. Stop in, see the show and get a copy of the In the Wake newspaper.
9000 newspapers takes up a lot more space that it sounds like it would. My truck is filled right now, sitting in my parents driveway in Pittsburgh. The papers are part of the series In the Wake. The paper is free and will be distributed throughout the Monongahela Valley and parts of Pittsburgh in the hopes to expose more people to the work that documents their communities.
Thank you to the Sprout Fund for making the project possible, Ron Baraff and Jen Saffron for contributing essays, Sean Rose for helping my essay be readable and Elana Schlenker for the design work. I’ll start distributing these papers today through the Mon Valley, from Homestead to Brownsville. Follow the project on tumblr, check locations to find a copy and use #wakepaper on twitter.
The new Dossier is out and looks awesome. This issue has a 24 Hour portfolio that brings together works from various artists to showcase what they each did during a specific hour. The list is full of talented people and I’m really excited to be included in the bunch. To see my hammock, roof and bathroom light, look at 5am to 6am. For more incentive to pick up a copy, the issue also has an essay and 8 page portfolio of Vivian Maier’s work.
Dave Cosper, Logan, Ohio, September 12, 2006
This is the first of some archive posts of older work that I did in black and white. It’s easily the most meaningful of the upcoming posts, which will be of horses, beards and pigeons.
Dave Cosper passed away on September 12, 2006 after winning his heats at the Hocking County Fair demolition derby. I had just met Dave and his family that day. The photo above is the first image I made of Dave, before I even introduced myself. I saw him and stopped, he looked over and I made this portrait. He was immediately and genuinely warm and open. We talked and he explained that his son Brandon drove too. I asked if I could spend the evening and make some photos of them all. Dave agreed and I met Brandon and Dave’s wife Natalie and started shooting.
That night was Dave’s first night back driving in demolition derbies. He had had health problems that sidelined him for awhile, but he had recovered and was behind the wheel again. Before the night ended, an ambulance took Dave out of the fairgrounds due to heart complications. He did not make it.
The following weekend I called Brandon, unaware of what happened to Dave. He explained the situation and that they had been trying to contact me that week. They had just returned from the funeral and he invited me to the derby that evening in which he would drive in his father’s place. I met them there that night.
It’s difficult to explain the emotions of that evening in words. All of Dave’s family and friends gathered next to the track to cheer on Brandon. There was an incredible warmth and togetherness that ran through everyone. So many people that I had never met took me in as a friend. The Cospers stayed together as a strong family does, and supported Brandon through the evening’s heats. He won both driving his father’s car.
The images from this series can be seen here.
Brandon Cosper, at a derby in southern Ohio, Fall 2006
Go to forth and back to see the work that Justin Visnesky and I are sending back and forth. Some of the photos are old, some are new, but mostly we’re sending each other the ones that don’t have a place and are bouncing around our archives. Check on it regularly. I’ll probably be updating that page with photos a little more often than this page.
The latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek is out now. I’m really excited to have worked on the photos for the cover story about retraining the unemployed in Detroit. It’s well worth the read and the cover is hard to miss on newsstands. Hope that you can check it out.
Until recently, the best space that I had the chance to work in was in the basement of my parent’s bicycle store. It had all the tools you needed. The benches and drawers were worn and hand built. From the years of employees coming and going and the hours upon hours of shit talking, everything had been covered in stickers, graffiti, inside jokes either forgotten or passed down to people who never met those initially involved. My favorite piece was a hand made sticker reading “One-Nut Racing” that someone stuck high on the wall after Lance Armstrong had made his come back and won his first or second Tour De France. The place was great and as a teenager I didn’t appreciate it fully at the time.
Since then, I’ve made my desk and workspace in the corner of whatever room I moved in to, never expecting to stay in it for very long. An old door or discarded scrap wood is easy to find on moving and trash days. I’ve learned that keeping everything stacked in milkcrates makes for quick moving, is an efficient use of space in the back of a small truck and also works well to support a desktop.
In April, I moved out of my Greenpoint apartment and with the encouragement of my girlfriend, I reluctantly tossed my piece of wood in the trash. The milkcrate supports took up a corner of her living room while I left town for a month to go to California and Pennsylvania. When I got back to Brooklyn in late May, it took another 3 or 4 weeks until we found a new place. I didn’t think it would be that hard, but I had never been without a work space – a desk, a bench, a garage, a chair in the corner – for that long before.
It worked out, we moved and I learned a lot from not having a space for that time. The new area is great. There are some shelves up high, a space for a light box, a chalkboard. It’s simple and has everything that I need to work how I’d like to work. The new desk (an L shape, wrapping around a corner and bounded by a divider made of used palettes and sheet metal) was built with the design and carpentry savvy of the man who engineered the work area pasted with a sticker dedicated to Lance and his remaining testicle. E and I can share ideas from our sides of the desk. Postcards, prints and running project lists hang from sheet metal. There are some plants, a miniature bust of George Washington and my scanner. I just need to find some space to put up a sticker I made last week.
photo by Jim Korpi (I think)
Confluence opened at UnSmoke Artspace in Braddock, Pa. this past Friday. Jim Korpi and I brought our work together again for the fourth showing of this exhibit. Jim showed some unedited contact sheets that he unearthed and added a couple new prints while I brought out a bunch of small prints that were previously unshown and added a short film that I put together earlier in the month. The night was a lot of fun, with many great conversations, a full keg of local beer donated by Brillobox and some music from our friends in Grand Piano. The show is up for a few more weeks. If you’re in the Pittsburgh area, check in with the folks at UnSmoke on a good time to see the show.
This is a piece from a roll of 120mm film that I shot during Halloween this past year in New York. You can see the full roll by clicking the long image below.
This is part of a series that I’ve worked on occasionally since the G20 convention in 2009. You can see more in a personal gallery on website. I tried to work in this manner first in photographing the G20 protests as a way to better understand the complexity of the event. I felt that these reaction based images offered a more complex interaction and understanding with the subjects appropriate to the relationships between the protesters, residents, the city, the event and my own presence and feelings as I walked through varying scenes.
In this work, I photograph as I see and feel. It’s a sort of release in which I react to my immediate surroundings, perceptions, and space. Later in studying and editing the film, I understand what I was seeing during these extended moments. It’s different visually from a lot of my work but has been a good exercise and experiment in looking at space and extended moments in a different way than I often do.
Lizzie Owens, Highland studio, Brooklyn, NY
The new issue of Fader features some stylish fall clothes that were photographed by an unfashionable guy. Check out issue 75 online or at the news stand to see some images that I made of Lizzie Owens in her Brooklyn studio and looks from four different designers.
Based on what Google Translate came back with, the title for this news post is “The Strip District” in Russian. The Moscow-based food and travel magazine, Pervoe Vtoroe Tretye, commissioned me for a set of photos from Pittsburgh’s Strip District. The Strip is the local market area, spanning about 10 or 12 blocks just outside of Downtown. It was great to have the opportunity to photograph one of my favorite parts of Pittsburgh and an even better excuse to eat some biscotti.
In May, Peter McCollough and I left the Exposure Gallery in San Francisco after hanging the Confluence show for an opening the following day. We were going to grab some dinner when we saw smoke. We walked toward it and found the source of the flames that were blanketing the surrounding blocks in grey. And a pick-up game.
The flower made it to Kentucky in pretty good shape. It had wilted slightly, but still held the yellow it had when E handed it to me when I left Brooklyn. Exhausted from the drive and loaded up with bags, I forgot it in the cup holder and it sat in the truck overnight. I found it the next morning when I packed my cameras into the passenger seat. I brought it inside, ripped open the plastic motel cups, dipped it in the water and left it on top of the television for the week that I stayed in Harlan.
The space below my scanner has accumulated a stack of 35mm negatives from rolls that I shot in passing and forgot about. I vaguely remember shooting this in the early spring maybe, or late winter. It was taken in Pennsylvania, early in the morning. I think I was driving west from Brooklyn on an assignment. It leaves me with the feeling of a slight hangover.
Going in to each shoot or assignment, I try not to have any preconceptions and let it all come together in a natural and honest manner. I’ll do my research and make sure that I’m clear with what the editor needs and scout a location if it’s possible. There are variables that you can never plan for though. The subject is the biggest of these. Maybe it’s a bad cup of morning coffee, a last minute crisis before the shoot, or unexpected cold feet.
I’ve had shoots that I thought that I would get 5 minutes with an impatient subject and end up having a great conversation while packing my bags an hour later. You can’t know what will happen. It’s fun and it keeps you honest. When the subject is great, the shoot is that much more enjoyable and I’m reminded that photography is far more than making portraits.
In June, I photographed Len and Mary Bach at their home in Pittsburgh’s eastern suburbs for Money magazine’s August issue. They have been photographed and interviewed by some well-known people and organizations. I’m at the bottom of their media coverage totem pole. They were in the middle of scheduling a radio piece the weekend that I was there and maybe something else for a local morning broadcast. They knew the whole process. The make-up and styling, the lighting and the pace, how to relax and how to carry themselves. They were easy to work with. But beyond that, they were some of the warmest and most enjoyable people I’ve had the opportunity to photograph.
The shoot wasn’t the most exotic, the location was outside a mid-sized American city. It’s memorable though, because Len and Mary were a lot of fun to photograph.
This photo of Clams Casino ran in the most recent issue of Fader to lead off the Gen F section. We met at his house in Nutley, NJ and shot a bunch around there and then wandered around the town some too. It was a great shoot. He’s really down to earth and very easy to work with. You should check his stuff out, click the link above, search Google, make sure you find it.
Kevin and Zimmer, from Riding Out the Summer
The temperature marked the thermostat somewhere around 100F a couple weeks ago. The humidity had you feeling like you had walked into a river and the concrete islands that comprise New York City make the heat heavier and harder to escape. I went to Queens one morning for a mountain bike ride on one of the few (but admittedly very fun) sets of trails in the city. In the shade the heat receded 10 or 15 degrees and it felt and smelled and looked like a summer that I’m more familiar with. I listened to Thunder Road twice. The song sounded good as the summer heat finally felt right in the woods.
Show a little faith there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty but hey you’re alright
Oh and that’s alright with me
I feel closely tied to the seasons. For me, the changes are necessary for a balanced life, made fuller with the highs of summer and the lows of winter. The cold of December allows for time to reflect on the year, it brings a finality, and then the previous year is cleaned away when the snow melts come April. The smells, the stickiness, the oppressiveness of Summer reminds us that we should not need to make excuses to break away from the responsibilities we place on ourselves. October grounds all the boundlessness of July and August in cool air and night long bon-fires. Soon the cycle starts over.
The light changes month to month. From cool to warm, high noon light to low angled day long sun, blue evening dusk and diffused dawn. We respond to the general interpretations of seasons that have been ingrained in our collective understanding. Every December in Florida, they load pine trees atop mini vans and sell decorations that reference a white winter to children who have never thrown a snowball. In the North, you wait for Summer so you can get into the neighbor’s pool to go swimming, or wait until the lake closes at night to bring in your case of beer and then you hope that the water isn’t too cold from the last two weeks of rain.
From the tone of the light and the colors of the environment we make associations with the images that we see based on our personal and collective understanding of seasons and the emotions that each entail. A friend from southern California said of the region that “the endless sun bleaches your senses.” It’s always summer in Los Angeles, or at the very least it always looks like summer to an Easterner.
In January, as a blizzard coats Brooklyn, I work on an image made during a recent trip to California and the room seems a little warmer, the sun faintly appears through the steel sky. I know that it’s winter there and there’s a chill to the air in LA, but that orange-caste image holds so much more latent memory than I intended it to the week before. Our senses sleep close to our memories and we respond to both when we see a photo, hear a song, or maybe just catch a glimpse of some stray summer light warming the ground in early Spring and we remember that the seasons change in New York.
Some recent shoots has been published in the latest issues of The Fader, Inc., and last week’s Bloomberg Businessweek.
Podium in the clubhouse, Green Hills, Pa.
Check out the latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek for a set of images that I shot of Green Hills, a small town in Pennsylvania that incorporated a few decades ago so that the golf course comprising the area could obtain a liquor license.
In the brush, San Francisco, Ca.
I’ve neglected updating this blog or this news page or this rolling list of shameless promotions for the month that I’ve been traveling. It was a great month and I’m not nearly as sorry for neglecting this web space during that time as I am for neglecting my own creative space prior to hitting the road.
At the end of April, with my lease running up and some exhibitions to hang, I headed back to Pittsburgh, shot a few assignments, went to Cleveland for an opening, ran out of time to tackle any personal work and then left for an opening of Confluence at the Exposure Gallery in San Francisco. Jim Korpi, the other half of the Confluence show, was in Europe and couldn’t attend. I spoke for both of us at the opening, which turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated. But I survived and didn’t drop my beer while speaking, so I’ve deemed it a success.
I had a week in San Francisco before my travel partner, creative sounding board, occasional boss and girlfriend, Elana Schlenker, met up with me to drive to Los Angeles. I spent a lot of the week roaming the city and looking for hills to climb up. Peter McCollough and I spent hours drinking coffee and talking about photography and life. He and Miki Johnson were kind enough to let me sleep on their floor for the week. As an important side note, let Miki cook for you if she offers, and if the situation never comes about, ask her where to eat.
The couple weeks in California were spent exploring, thinking and working on images that I plan to build on as the start of new personal work. This is something that I’ve neglected to allow time for recently. Traveling and the freedom of mind that follows it allowed me to explore ideas more openly and with less concern for the results.
Personal work is such an important part of creative well-being. This space that personal work exists in is there for experimenting, trying out ideas, speaking openly about concerns and developing the craft visually and intellectually. I tried to fit this in to my schedule over the past year, taking a day here or an hour there to squeeze out some time for personal work. Though, I’ve come to understand that I require some amount of unhindered time to develop projects, think through ideas and put those thoughts in to practice. It’s most important for me to allow for this at the start of a new project or when I’m trying to formalize some new ideas into something coherent.
The balance is hard. I’ve been lucky enough to talk with many photographers who have reiterated the same thoughts and have been kind enough to offer suggestions. Balancing personal work, professional work and the daily obligations that come with life is incredibly demanding and a constant challenge that I never expect to become easier. While in Pennsylvania and California, I shot some photos for work and some photos for me. I hope to keep doing this for a long time to come, all while being aware and careful of the tipping point on the balance.
This is old news but I’m posting it anyway. Douglas Max Utter reviews the exhibit Clampdown for the Cleveland Scene. I’m honored to have had work from In the Wake of an American Dream in the show and very flattered by the blurb at the end of the review
“Pittsburgh artist Ross Mantle sums up the exhibit’s theme most cogently. His large photo collage ‘In the Wake of an American Dream’ is an array of images depicting people and places found in post-industrial Pennsylvania. Mantle’s elegy is a tribute to the works and workers that built a nation, many of whom are foundering in a time of rapid change, hasty decisions, and blatant greed.”
Skye Parrot at Dossier Journal posted an edit of images taken from some different projects on the Look section of Dossier Journal. Check it out here..
Installing In the Wake of an American Dream for Clampdown in Cleveland, Ohio
Greg Ruffing has put together a great exhibition on labor, management and the recession, titled Clampdown, at the Zaller Gallery in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. Greg asked me to show In the Wake of an American Dream and I immediately said yes. I’m honored and excited to be exhibiting along side so many talented artists working to build a conversation on the issues our country faces.
Working with Greg on the presentation and layout was a really fun process that had me thinking a lot as we bounced ideas and edits back and forth over the last couple of weeks. Between beers, chili burgers and paint fumes, we managed to magnetize 20+ prints to a wall. Unfortunately I won’t be in Cleveland tonight for the opening, but if you are, check it out and someone buy Greg a beer at the SSW Boardwalk afterward.
Please don’t bring any magnets if you go.. For real, no jokes..
Oscar Statues, Manhattan
2nd Ave. fruit stand and subway construction, Manhattan
Robert Niznik, Sphoonkle founder, NY Law School
Balloons on Houston, Manhattan
Some work from recent assignments with The Wall Street Journal.
Hotel Pool, Kentucky
I will be packing my bags again soon to hit the road after traveling for the last few weeks on a couple recent assignments. I’ll first be going back to Pittsburgh and Cleveland before flying to California in May. It’ll be a busy but very exciting few weeks, with a couple openings scheduled and some shooting plans in the works.
But that’s not what this post is about. When I travel, I try to crash with friends, at campgrounds or maybe in a parking lot. When I do get a hotel, and I’m told that it has a pool, I’m quietly overcome with excitement. I contain it some on the phone and say, ‘oh, that’s great to hear’ or something else to play it down. I can’t remember the last time that I went in a hotel pool, but I pack my trunks anyway. It’s the little kid in me, excited to travel, to explore, to see something new and maybe at night, when the day is winding down, I’ll get to go swimming.
Mets fans, Queens, NY, 2010.
It’s baseball season and I’m a Pittsburgh native. It doesn’t need to be mentioned again, but it’s been a rough couple decades for baseball fans in my hometown. The Pirates last marked a winning record in ‘92, well before Barry Bonds started his steroid diet.
When I came to New York last May, I thought to start following the Mets, who would be more exciting to watch and have a much better chance to make the playoffs. Throughout the summer, though, I’d keep checking on the scores back in Pennsylvania and watched from a distance as the Pirates again fell to the bottom of the division with 105 losses and the worst record in baseball.
While it’s futile to watch them play out the season in last place year after year, it still feels better to watch the Pirates comically lose than follow another team. As the 2011 season starts, I’ll continue to root for the home team and hope for .500.
Riding Out the Summer booklets are now available for purchase. The prices include shipping and each booklet is sent with a extra special amount of gratitude to the buyer. Thanks in advance to anyone who picks one up, thinks about picking one up or just takes the time to click the links.
If you have some empty wall space that you’re really itching to fill, there are also some prints from Between Lives and In the Wake of an American Dream for sale.
John Francis Peters interviewed me for his new column, Makers and Takers on the Fader website. The conversation ranges from photo talk to the American Dream and a lot of places in between and further along. It was great chatting with John like this and I’m honored to be the first photographer featured in his column.
La Pura Vida posted some images from In the Wake of an American Dream. Check it out here
Bent Pines, by Justin Visnesky
Check out this interview with friend, fellow Pennsylvanian and maker of beautiful images, Justin Visnesky.
(Another photo of Justin’s that I wish I had taken)
Public hearing on proposed shale drilling, Honesdale, Pa.
I have some photos in this Bloomberg Businessweek slideshow from a story about fracking in Northeast Pennsylvania and Upstate New York. It was a great opportunity to shoot for a publication that’s been doing some really good things lately. I enjoyed working on this story and exploring some new places. Check out the print edition if you see it on news stands, it should be out this week.
Lunch time 23rd St., Manhattan, NY
Driveway, Brooklyn, NY
Sheets and pillows, Brooklyn, NY
I picked up a new camera recently. It’s small and I can put it in my pocket. These images are from some of the first rolls that I ran through it.
Last month, I had the opportunity to photograph Wiz Khalifa (another Pittsburgh native) in Los Angeles for the Fader. The new issue is coming out in early March with Wiz on the cover. Until then, you can find a few photos over at the Fader blog.
Charleroi Locks, Monongahela River at Charleroi, Pa.
This is another catch up post… I shot an assignment for The Wall Street Journal while in Pittsburgh at the end of December. The story focused on the locks at Charleroi and highlights the infrastructure problems along the nation’s waterways. I’ve photographed Charleroi numerous times for the series In the Wake of an American Dream and was fortunate to see the area from a new vantage point. You can see a slideshow here.
Below is an image of Charleroi from a cemetery across the river at about the same time last winter. My truck ended up stuck in the snow in the cemetery that morning. The tow truck driver was not happy pulling me out and almost became stuck himself.
Grandview Cemetery, overlooking Charleroi, Pa.
Skid marks, South Strabane, Pa.
Happy New Year to all! I am now back in Brooklyn after a month and a half hiatus that took me through North Carolina on a road trip, into Louisiana for a workshop, up to Ohio to prepare an exhibition, back to Pittsburgh to see family and wrap up some work, then out to Los Angeles for an assignment and back to a snowy Brooklyn to unpack.
Over New Year’s, from the comforts of my parent’s attic, I updated my website, and added some new work to all the portfolios. Some of the images from my former blog, Run on Sentences are also at rossmantle.com.
I’m currently working on some booklets of Riding Out the Summer that will soon be for sale with a limited edition print.
