Cabin On A Lake
It’s all we ask for on holiday: a small, cozy cottage on a midwestern lake, somewhere quiet and isolated to land when our daily adventures are done.
It’s all we ask for on holiday: a small, cozy cottage on a midwestern lake, somewhere quiet and isolated to land when our daily adventures are done.
I first learned about Barry Phipps’s Iowa photos project on Feature Shoot, and, as a fellow Midwesterner, could hardly contain my excitement – it’s my kind of project, full of story and place and changes.
I’m in Iowa City, IA. Moved here four years ago from Chicago, where I lived for 22 years. I’m a working photographer and artist.
I studied photography at The Kansas City Art Institute in the late eighties. I’m old, so we were taught how to shoot, develop, and print film.
I’m very hard on myself, so it’s hard sometimes to say I like my own photography. That said, I enjoy a means of communication that isn’t blatantly about me. It’s more impersonal and less directly emotive than, say, making music. I’m a former musician who finds it gut wrenchingly difficult to listen to a song I’ve recorded and released where I’m singing, but have no problem digging through old photographs and finding enjoyment doing so.
I enjoy weddings and portrait work. I still shoot film and approach it in the same way as my Iowa Photographs series, and tend to work for artists, photographers, writers and the like. I don’t really look much at other wedding photographers for inspiration. My studio portrait work isn’t really influenced by other work. I’m inspired by Richard Avedon and kind of jealous of Terry Richardson. I like looking through Vanity Fair and those types of magazines as I’m waiting to get my hair cut. I’d love to do fashion stuff, but not going out of my way to make that happen. I do live in Iowa, after all.
Thanks! Actually, I feel the Iowa Photographs series gave my photography a sense of purpose, focus, and direction. I photographed lots in Chicago, but moving to Iowa four years ago really gave me a sense of direction. I’m really drawn to this place. I initially just started taking day trips in every direction from Iowa City, just to see what was out there. It was exciting to be in a new place. I assumed I would live in Chicago for the rest of my life. Chicago can be a challenging place to leave. You can drive for two hours and still be in the city sometimes. Here, it’s liberating to be able to just get in my car and drive in any direction and be somewhere new in just a few minutes. Iowa is populated with a million small towns, most never more than six or seven miles from the last one. Iowa was mostly populated within a few years, mostly by European immigrants. So, these towns formed, thrived, peaked and later declined as the original purpose of servicing farming families dried up. There’s a consistency town to town, but also a uniqueness. I’m always surprised by what I find.
The Iowa Photographs series will continue, but I have wrapped up my initial phase of the project. I’ve photographed every county in Iowa and have accumulated what I consider a fair representation of the state of the state. I’m currently putting a book together of the best stuff from this phase. It will be published by The University of Iowa Press around 2019.
You can purchase Phipps’s Iowa Photographs series in volumes, and follow along on Instagram. Check out more of Phipps’s work at his portfolio site.
Riding the Amtrak train from Chicago to Michigan, part two. Enjoying the beautiful passing scenery of the Rust Belt.
A view back from when life was a little warmer, sunnier, and colorful.
But that’s the thing about living in a place like Michigan: each season has its own beauty, and its own reason for being.