On the site: a new series from near Salt Lake City, Utah in September: here.

The Benson Grist Mill is a small tourist attraction of a restored grist mill north of the city. The mill building itself is large, three stories high and was powered by a stream. It dates back to 1842. The project ends up being in black and white as I felt that color would not add to the pictures. Working on these photographs over the past two weeks felt very much like I was working within my own tradition of making series work: black and white, wide angle lens, hand held camera and walking through a place or an area to make a sequential body of photographs. This way of working, what I call "series" work, came about a long time ago in the early 80's. I wrote about this discovery in a few posts starting here: 

http://www.nealrantoul.com/posts/nantucket-1980%20Part%201.

Over my now long career as an artist, making series work has lived as a core principal for me.

This is a little difficult to communicate effectively but ultimately I am often not so invested in a place that I photograph as what that place means in terms of the pictures I make from it. Another way to say this is to ask the question if I cared about the grist mill's history? What it was used for? The role that it played in the local economy of the time? Not so much. On the other hand, without this content, this subject in front of me that day, what would I have? Nothing. It is this Harry Callahan was referring to when he said that the "subject is everything". 

Let's take a look.

This is the title page. Benson Grist Mill is a sequenced and numbered portfolio of pictures, printed 20 inches across on 22 x 17 inch Canson Photographique Baryta paper, in black and white. 

The first picture in the set is this:

and it establishes that we are in some sort of farm or old village on a very bright and sunny day in the summer or early fall with paved paths, which would reinforce that this is a place for tourists to come see and that is correct. We see the bottom half of a log cabin, a lot of grass, some bushes and a shadow. Of course, in this one the big elephant in the scene is the shadow of a wind mill, which, as it turns out, we never see in reality in the series. This is a prevailing theme throughout this 17 print series. The shadow contained within the picture, without the actual object being shown. This image, were you to see it up close and personal, is sharp and exceptionally clean, the print is open and without color or toning with deep blacks but with detail contained within them,  Zone lll shadows, if you know what that means.

As we go through these it might be helpful if you think of the series as photographs in pairs, with some existing as spaces between the pairs. I will point them out as we go along. For this one we have the same building now described mostly in front of us with strong light on the logs looking almost bleached on this bright sunny day. Notice that the top of the building is cut off. I am known for this and it irritates many but I believe in the device, truncating the top peak as it contains the picture better. There is also something of an "arrow" in the shadow pointing us to the left to the grist mill which is coming up, but not quite next as we have this one before we go there.

Why? For its surface treatment, and for its sheer textural richness and beauty. Notice the shadow again here, never defined as to what it is coming from.

Let me take us off topic slightly for minute. In this set we have nothing revolutionary at all. I am using commonly available materials, am handling single files one at a time to make single pictures. I am hand holding the camera when shooting and am using a wide angle zoom lens. All of this is everyday practice digital photography. But, I am doing all this with as consummate a skill level of rendering as I know how to make based upon my over 40 years of experience as a photographer. Does it matter? I think it does but you would have to be the judge by seeing the actual prints. I would hold this photograph up as an example. Sliding your eyes over the surface of that door, this very old wood standing the test of almost a couple of centuries is a little like looking at the variety and subtleties of a landscape photographed from the air. 

Let's move on, into a sort of trilogy, out of respect for the structure itself, the grist mill that was built originally in 1842, the core of this little assemblage of buildings, shacks and barns, but also because in pictures, at least, it is magnificent.

So here we are at what would seem to be the very center of the series, the pictures of the grist mill itself. But I've gotten there only four pictures into the series. Why is that? Because it is a false center. It really isn't the main point of this series but only serves as a lead in and prelude to some other things I want to say farther down into the series.

So this one, turning things into obliques and angles, gives us a little of the front of  the grist mill but denies us much knowledge of the overall structure. This was really a decision made more in editing than the day I was making the pictures. Because I did stand back and photograph the front full facade of the building but didn't include it as it left nothing to the imagination. I would even go as far to say that it didn't have any "artistry". I know that may seem odd but the image (notice I am not showing it to you) was factual and boring. And you and I both do not have time for those.

So, next up:

Bang. Straight. No convergence as I am standing on a slight hill to shoot it and with a little sky showing along the top edge. A facade based picture with what looks like the sun almost dead on behind me, a little to the right perhaps. On the right, the same steps we saw in the previous frame, what looks like an antenna or a short cel tower in the background place us now in 2015, not 1842 and then the side of the building serving as the springboard to head us back to the ridge where there seem to be some buildings. We are headed there but not quite yet. And finally keep an eye on the fence as it will reappear here:

No longer so straight. Here I am letting the width of the lens have its due, rather than playing it conservative. Clearly the lens making things a little different. I remember working to make that center line of the edge of the grist mill be straight and then letting whatever else was in the frame angle out.

Are we having fun yet? I know I am. Let's do one more and then we'll save the rest for part 2.

Odd. Yes, this is our original log cabin but placed here as though we've looped back around to it from the grist mill. True enough. That is exactly the way it worked. In order to move farther on and end up on the ridge back behind the mill I needed to walk on the path you see to the left to a small bridge that crossed the stream. In terms of the project this is a little like hinting at something, denying it and then giving it to you. As a very poor pianist, I often play against a chord to increase tension and make the getting to the harmony in the cord itself more rewarding and satisfying. Same here. Note the extension cord coming out from the doorway leading to the black frame around which another picture is being framed, the continuance of the pathway in the far background, the verticality of this small one mimicked by the two windows. Finding a way to make a vertical photograph in a horizontal frame? Always fun.

I would think by now you might be mulling over what I said at the start.  About the subject being of secondary importance in relation to the pictures made from it. Another way to analogize about it is this: it might be helpful to think of what is in front of you with your camera as a list of ingredients from which any of us could make a wide variety of dishes for our dinner. As I parked my car and walked into the Benson Grist Mill with no camera, not knowing what it was, and scouted the location for a few minutes, made the decision that this was good and headed back to the car to get my camera I was thinking about logistics, of course (what lens, what ISO, have I got a fresh card, should I bring a backup battery with me?) but also that here I was, once again, about to embark on a series and psyched for the challenge of making pictures that might become a part of my oeuvre. In fact, that's just what has happened.

This is probably a good place to stop this post. I will bring Part 2 in quickly, in a day or so, and hope you will stay along for that one too.

I hope you are enjoying the look at this new work. Let me know by emailing me. Would you like me to continue? 

Neal's email: here

If you want to see the Benson Grist Mill series as prints get in touch with 555 Gallery in Boston. 

Next up: Benson Grist Mill Part 2

Another in a series taking a look at some of the tools I have used to make my pictures over the years. Last month I did a couple of posts on the Rollei SL66. Next up we're going to look at the Hasselblad Superwide (SWC). The SWC is a camera that has a rich tradition across many types of photography. Developed in the 1950's to fit a very special lens made by Karl Zeiss to a camera  body, it was a camera made to accommodate a lens rather than the other way around. It was also completely unique in the Hasselblad line of cameras and, indeed, across all of photography.

The camera used a fixed 38mm f3.5 Carl Zeiss Biogon lens, in a 120mm square format that used interchangeable backs. As it had no mirror, it was viewfinder-based with focusing determined by guessing the distance then setting the feet on the barrel of the lens. It had no meter, no electronics at all. It was also very small due to having no mirror so it really was a one-handed camera.

I had two of them. The first one I bought used in 1978 (from Phil Levine) and then sold it in 1984 to buy an 8 x 10 view camera. By 1996 I was back into one and bought it new. By this time its price had become very high and the body had been revised slightly.

What pictures did I make with it? 

What pictures didn't I make with it! 

It was the primary camera I used to make series work, my main vehicle of expression over my whole career. Here are a few, searchable on the gallery page of my site:

Nantucket

Yountville

Boston (in infrared)

Solothurn

Portland ( with a blog post explaining the pictures here) 

Newtown

Summerhill

Old Trail Town

Hersheyand on and on. All the photographs from the monograph published in 2006 : American Series

were made with the camera except for the wheat pictures, which were made with the 8 x 10.

Why was the camera so special? Quite simply it was the lens. 38mm on the 2 1/4 format is roughly equivalent to 25mm in 35mm. So this was a very wide lens. But it also was unique in that it fell off very little in sharpness and exposure in the corners and if kept level (hence the bubble level built into the finder) straight lines would stay straight. Plus, the lens was very sharp. The print of the boys on the dock from the Nantucket series is sitting downstairs at my home and is 43 inches square. It is very sharp.

Advanced students would occasionally approach me about this camera, thinking, if they liked my pictures, they might like to own a Superwide. Besides the obstacle of the camera's cost (about $5000!) the SWC was a highly specialized tool for making photographs. I would explain that this camera wasn't any kind of all-purpose tool to make pictures with. You had to be able to move in close to your subject and any work with an extremely wide-angle lens is always exacting. This usually discouraged them. I got so that I could guess the distance pretty well as there was no way to precisely check the focus except using the company's ground glass adapter. This was more for studio photographers and perhaps for some architectural work but it was cumbersome in the field. I would say 90% of the work I did with the camera was handheld. But over the years I got to know what I could and could not do with it. When it was the right tool for the job it was simply amazing. 

I don't know if people have the same degree of connectedness with their cameras these days or not. And I generally don't like to attribute huge importance to the tool used to make our art. But the SWC and I were figuratively connected at the hip. I still am in awe at what it allowed me to do, make pictures that span over 25 years of my career that are as close to me as anything I have ever done, seminal works that formed the basis for my practice. Finally, I learned much of the methodology from it that I still use today when I photograph, though I am now working exclusively with digital cameras. 

This is a 903 SWC, like the model I owned. I sold mine a few years ago.

The last version of the camera was called the 905 SWC. Hasselblad stopped making the camera in  2005. Odd but this last one has a reputation of being the worst in all the years the camera was made. Hasselblad was required to change some of the chemicals they used for environmental reasons to make their lenses and the new formulation made the lens less sharp.

Other people that used or use it? Lee Friedlander comes to mind and Harry Callahan made many of his beach pictures with one, using a 645 back instead of the square.

As you know, my work is represented by 555 Gallery in Boston. Want to see any of the above portfolios? Just ask.

I don't usually write about equipment but the Rollei SL66 was such an important camera for me and many others I think it is appropriate. Plus, I just gave one of my two Sl66's away. 

This from the site Rolleiflex SL66

First single lens 6x6 camera by Rolleiflex: the SL66

They conceived a camera based on the construction elements of a studio camera, with the focusing rail on the left side. This was done so photographers accustomed to Rollei Twin Lens Reflex cameras would feel comfortable to find all operating elements in the same places: focusing on the left side, film advance and shutter release on the right side. Weiss and Prochnow had the camera ready, in time for the 1966 Photokina photographic fair in Cologne. Hence the name of the camera, SL66 for 1966 and 6x6, the size of the negatives.

At the time, development of the camera had cost Rollei about 3.5 million German Marks, which, at today's value, would be more than $ 10 million. A very large amount of money for a small company like Rollei this is, and shows how dedicated Rollei was to this new 'super Rolleiflex'.
The SL 66 consists of almost 1,000 single parts, all metal with the exception of only about 10 plastic parts (apart from the leatherette covers).

The Rollei SL 66 with the 40 mm Distagon lens and the grip which helped in hand holding

I bought mine in 1971. In those days, photographers wanting to step up in format from 35mm and still be able to hand hold would look to 2 1/4 (120mm) for higher quality due to the larger negative. Twin lens reflex cameras were made by Yashica, Rollei, and Mamiya. Single lens reflex cameras were made by Hasselblad, Bronica, Mamiya and Pentax. Photographers' highest quality choice was Hasselblad. With Carl Zeiss lenses, superb build quality and a reasonable size the Blad was expensive and a system camera. You could work with different models, format backs, reflex finders, add on meters and a long list of lenses, all at high cost. It was used on space missions by NASA, microscopy, National Geographic and countless studio photographers all over the world. You get the picture: Hasselblad was the Leica of 2 1/4 cameras. Many people think Hasselblad is a German camera. But it's not. The lenses are of German design but the camera is made in Sweden.

But the Rollei represented another step up in the line of available 2 1/4 SLR's for it was designed to do many more things than the Hasselblad. 

In the spring of 1971 I had just been accepted to the RI School of Design for study in the graduate photography MFA program. Harry Callahan had been my teacher for the junior and senior years at RISD and had a Rollei. (If you don't know about Callahan and his photography I recommend searching for it on line.) He was making wonderful prints off of negatives shot with the camera and I was looking at buying one, with an 80mm Zeiss Planar, a right angle prism finder and the grip. But I was concerned about the cost. If I remember right this was adding up to about $2000 that I didn't have. I went to Harry and explained I'd bought whole cars for a lot less than that. He asked me if I was serious about making pictures over my career. No one had ever asked me this in such a straight forward way. I answered, "yes." He said $2000 was very little to pay for something that could serve a lifetime, for a tool that I would make my pictures with, pictures that had a place in my heart for me and perhaps others as well. I decided on the spot. I ordered one, had it shipped to a friend's parents in Worcester to avoid the sales tax and waited for what seemed like forever. As soon as they called I jumped in the car and drove right up there from Providence. When I got it I was in heaven, reading the manual, dismantling it, playing with focus and it's tilt function.

The Rollei SL 66  showing the camera's tilt function

Yes, it could tilt its lens 6 degrees up and 6 degrees down. Big difference from the Hasselblad which was always fixed in parallel to its lenses. As I was working on a senior thesis project I began running film through it and making prints for class. But I couldn't get a sharp picture out of it. My classmates thought it was a bad lens so I sent it off to Rollei in New Jersey. It took about a month to get it back and Rollei said all was well. More tests and the same problem. This went on for a while, with me feeling like I'd spent way too much money for something that wasn't any good. No way was I doing the thesis with this camera as the pressure was on to make the final prints. So I shot it with one of the school's 4 x 5's.

Finally we shook loose what was going on. The focusing screen, which is removable on the SL66, was in its housing upside down. Lots of people were handling this camera when I received it as I was the first in school to own one and we never did know if it came that way,  or if someone mistakenly reversed it or if I did. This meant I was focusing on a different plane than where the film resided in the film back therefore guaranteeing blurry results.  All became right with the world when I turned the screen over and shot and processed film. Bingo! I can still remember what that was like. I was in the word of clarity, transparency, depth and sharpness. Life became really really good again.

By the time I started graduate study the next fall I was making pictures that were right up there with my classmates and my expectations for the camera were fulfilled. Odd to think that the tool we use holds such significance in the manner of the work we make but it does. Photography has always been reliant on its tools, its technology. For some the camera is everything. But Harry Callahan taught me that it was important to use the best device you could afford, that this after all, was your work and that the tools we use needed to be bought in awareness to their intended purpose. The best paint brushes, the best and most permanent oils.  An enlarger that is rigid and stable. An enlarging lens that is faithful to the clarity and sharpness of the negative.These days the computer and storage that are up the task of handling files of large size, the display that depicts your work with clarity and depth, the printer that conveys your work in a full range of colors and prints a deep black, and so on. His advice has served me well over now a long career of making pictures. 

Thanks Harry for that.

My friend Gail now has a second Rollei SL66. I was honored to part with it as the Rollei is the primary tool she uses to make her art. And her first Rollei is showing signs of being very tired. 

Funny, I have often sold cameras to buy new or different ones. In 1984 I sold a Hasselblad Superwide that was about as important to me as my right eye to buy the one and only 8 x 10 camera I ever used: the 8 x 10 Toyo Field. 

But I still have my Rollei.

Neal Rantoul, 1972, made with the Rollei and 80mm f2.8 Carl Zeiss Planar lens

Coming up: Part 2 of the Rollei SL66 experience. And some insight into who photographed with one.  Hint: think Aaron Siskind, Ansel Adams, etc.

Note: you can read about more of my early work here.

The photographer sits at his desk on the island in the house he owns with his two sisters. It is a mid sixties Eliot Noyes designed house with a broad view of the south coast of the island as it is sited high up on a hill overlooking a mile of land before the shore with a view all the way out to the horizon. He has spoken before how this location is partially responsible for an aesthetic long on horizontality over now a career of making landscape photographs. 

2012

Faced with hip surgery soon, he finds himself unable to do things he used to take for granted. He is still able to make pictures that connect and have force, though perhaps the car is parked nearby or the picture is made close to the road, for walking isn't easy. But his fluidity with his medium is due to decades of work looking and making pictures of what he sees.

He has made new pictures at the the other end of the island in a remote place where soil erosion is winning the battle against a stand of trees.The ocean is at its most powerful here and a cut in the point of sand has wreaked havoc where the waves meet the land. 

2014

In several flights to photograph the island over the past three years, he has been struck by how much this particular landscape has been transformed. As the bluff erodes the trees have no choice but to fall, one by one. This time he drove to the end of the dirt road, parked and walked along the strip of trees, looking out at the ocean as it ripped around the outermost bend in the island. 

As is typical for him, he found himself interested in wildly different content looking out and in, a 180 degree metaphor for the external and internal lives we all lead.

This work, some new and some now three years old, is forming in his head as a project that will look at a piece of island land both from the air and also on the ground. This will be his third such project, and seems surprising to him that this isn't done by others here. This sense one has of what the place really looks like from the air as in a kind of survey contrasted with what is perceived of the individual choices he makes as he works throughout the land on foot. One almost objectified and the other highly personal, almost intimate. The place versus his place. Like that.

These two from a series in 2014 that looked at Tom's Neck from the ground (well, actually, from the water as he made these while in a kayak) and from the air.

These are from the island of Chappaquidick near the Dyke Bridge.

The other project made here, the first, is: Spring and Fall

As he sits at his desk as the light fades from the day writing and thinking about these photographs and all his work made here on the island, he finds the challenge of making new work of this landscape to be difficult but also extremely rewarding. One of his teachers long ago, Aaron Siskind, who also photographed here, said to him that the place was only an island, meaning that you would inevitably run out of material here. The photographer has at times worked hard here and at other times not at all but he finds now there are still things to do on this island. 

He is very fortunate to live at least part of the year in a place of such beauty and diversity. 

He chooses to end with these, in black and white now, of the trees that fell and haven't yet been swept away by winter storms. And the last picture, forecasting a very different season approaching.

The photographer is represented by 555 Gallery in Boston. Please contact Susan Nalband, the gallery owner, with any questions about this work or any other by the photographer who happens to be named Neal Rantoul.

Of course you can always email me and I welcome your comments: Neal's email

In 1983 I made a group of pictures in the town of Solothurn in Switzerland. 

They were a breakthrough group for me. As big as Nantucket (my first series) or the Oakesdale Cemetery (made in 1997) pictures, these brought me into a new way of seeing, in making sequential  pictures and established and confirmed a methodology that serves me to this day.

This was the first time I linked pictures next to each other. Putting something hinted at in one frame then clearly stated in the next but with the whole scene around it changing. A concept totally reliant on the very wide lens I used being held level to deceive the viewer into thinking all was normal when, of course, it was not. Note the laundry drying rack coming right up into your face in the second frame. That's an indicator at the severity of the width of the lens.

I wrote recently about the  pictures from Arsenale in Venice made 20 years later. Clearly, the pictures from Solothurn are the precedent (on the site here). I don't know if you can learn something from them or if they read as relevant today, but they sure rocked my world then. Epiphany? Oh yes, for sure. The closest I can come to Solothurn in the present day is the The Wall, Chelsea, MA made in 2014. If I hadn't made the Solothurn pictures 31 years earlier who knows if I would have arrived at the same place.

Note the same crumbling wall in all three of the photographs above.

Part of the act or life of being a career artist has to be this: the ability to sense that you've arrived at something large enough to pay attention to, to remember, to use in your cache of abilities, to apply when you find yourself in front of it again. In my case, this way of working is clearly a subset of a larger structure, the series work itself. You must have that too, a way of seeing or a sensitivity to a certain form or shape or content that you've worked with before and are familiar with. Repetitious? No, I don't think so. Just working within a construct that has worked before and that is used again when relevant.

In looking at these again, now made 32 years ago (yikes!), I find huge differences in the way I was seeing back then compared to now. The pictures looked less "together", less formalized, less structured and tight. There is a looseness to the Solothurn pictures that I like very much. Blurry here? Whatever. The edge not perfect? So what.

Don't like that branch coming down and intruding into the frame? Deal with it. A little assertive and sure. I am not implying I am less now, just different.

Take that camera with its fixed 38 mm Zeiss Biogon lens out of level and all hell breaks loose. 

See why I was so excited? These three frames above sliding along that same wall with the shutters, the door, the propane tank, and the wonderful bonus of the hanging garment in plastic rendered in multiple frames was simply too much. 

And then we start a new chapter or section:

Completely irresistible.

Solothurn, CH 1983. 

Magic. 

Want to see real prints of these? Contact 555 Gallery and ask if they can be made available for viewing. But be careful: there is only one set of the original 1983 prints and I do not break up series work for individual sales. But know this: you can look all you want for free.