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Michael Christopher Brown – Sakhalin
Emerging Photographer Fund – FINALIST (number four of eleven)
Introduction:
Photographed predominantly in the broken, rusted, skeletons of communities around Sakhalin Island, Russia, these images explore the wintry atmosphere of a remote land and its people, long scarred from the Soviet era and left behind in modern times.
Artist Statement:
I have always searched for obscure places to escape to and explore. I spent much of my childhood carving trails in mustard and cornfields and wandering the roads and woods of rural Washington State. As I grew, my interest turned to extreme sports and through these activities I reaped fullness in life. Moreover, as a stuttering youth these solo, expressive pursuits were seemingly vital vehicles of communication.
After physical injuries alienated me from this lifestyle and my friends, my father taught me photography. The camera led me inward and I discovered the richness in not only documenting experiences and the physical world but in visually interpreting my surroundings by noticing what was happening inside myself. To see beyond the depressed emotions in my life, photography, paradoxically, showed me a way to recognize the life behind things, a means of expression beyond the physical world.
Bio:
Raised in the Skagit Valley, a farming community in Washington State, Michael earned a BA in Psychology and Art from Western Washington University and the University of Hawaii in 2000.
After completing an MA in Visual Communication from Ohio University in 2003, he won the College Photographer of the Year Competition and completed internships at The State Journal-Register and National Geographic Magazine before beginning freelance work in 2006.
In 2007, his essay profiling industry in the Pearl River Delta Region of China was broadcast on PBS during The News Hours with Jim Lehrer. Later that year, American Photo named him one of fifteen emerging “photo pioneers.” In 2008 he was selected for the World Press Joop Swart Masterclass, named a Magenta Emerging Photographer, a PDN 30 and a ‘Young Gun’ by The Art Directors Club in New York. In 2009 he won a Juror’s Choice Award from the Santa Fe Project Competition.
A contributing photographer to the Grazia Neri photo agency, Michael is working on a project about Broadway.
Photographs: Michael Christopher Brown
Website: www.mcbphotos.com
Editor’s Note: Please only one comment per person under this essay..Futher discussions should take place under Dialogue..
Many thanks…david alan harvey
Michael
As I said when I first saw this essay I think it’s great. Congrats, you deserve to be here…
DAH
Hey it’s Ross. Hurt my back then been struck with Swine Flu (not really) just the flu. Anyway, just got back from finally shooting again in the mountains. Would love to talk. Im emailing you a link to the new Patagonia stuff. Would you take a look and let me know when we can talk again. Hope all is well…
Interesting. I really liked this work when it first went up months ago. I still really like it, but this edit tends to be veering into Nat Geo land too much for me. The dancers, kids in the car, etc, while good photos in and of themselves, distract from this other more abstract thing you have going on that is very very good (imo).
The captions I could do without. Just name the place – it’s obvious it’s a dog crossing an alley, you are looking through a window, etc etc. Never state the obvious in a caption. I like the abstractness of the photos. I think they tell me a lot about the place – in a different way then the obvious journo way.
Anyway, I would love to see what you could do with Skagit Valley. I drive through there often on the way to San Juan Islands where my parents live and have always been struck with the light and farms and backroads and contrast between the valley and the mountains. Perhaps growing up there is partly what drew you to Sakhalin?
I can’t help looking at the pictures, and placing them on pages of a Natl Geo magazine, as counterpoints to a text. I am not sure they stand so well alone, as projecting a sense of that specific place. They seem to speak more of a time, an era, but applied to a general geography, that of the post-communist world where experiments with capitalism and renewed individualism has introduced a new culture, a new consumerism, and the unavoidable wild frontier “sins” so alike in any such place around the world. So, for me, I am not sure the pictures feel or speak that much. Without the text.
I find the other essays on your site more visually enthralling, and terrifically inspiring (not “ferry”, though, it let me down after the others), where your talent shines, and well, there it is, what a super photographer you are. It’s a joy . Your place is definitely within the last ten, at the very very least….
What i take out of this essay is your edit, and making me think about the process of editing.
I’d imagine most of us would be happy with the pictures you’ve uncovered from this cold lonesome place. i’m getting more curious about the pictures one leaves out looking at these essays.
i also get what your saying about photography enriching your life as i also use photography to go out and find the richness of the world and try to document it enthusiastically so others can also see what i see. basically to share.
Dear Michael,
It’s verly lovely works, and Actully realistic and slightly dreamy and romantic…
It reminds me the movie,” Doktor Zhivago”.
I enjoyed it very much and I love it.
Wonderful!!
Thank you so much and congratulations!!
I love this essay, one of my favorite posts on Burn. Incredible style, an eclectic mix of compositions and a fantastic mix of journalism and art. I’m inspired.
Michael — Congratulations. This is one of my favorite essays that has been published on burn all year. I keep coming back to view it. I am glad to see it has been selected as a finalist. Well done.
Adam
i have waited a good while to comment on this essay. I have read all the comments and wish to respond specifically to those who feel that the photographer did not get close enough to his subjects. When i go through these photos i feel cold, i feel isolated, i feel alone, lonely, out of place. I feel like a foreigner. I feel like someone who will not be invited home to tea or Sunday dinner or to a wedding or birthday party. I am an alien viewing Michael´s experience as an alien. Michael was not a foreigner dropping into Miami Beach where people linger socially in the streets, on the beach, at the bars. This is a cold formidable place in the winter time.
I don´t know this culture and it has not been revealed to us whether these people are friendly or not. And perhaps that is one unresolved problem with the essay. Michael tells us a lot about himself in the text but next to nothing about the nature of these people. Is this about Michael traveling abroad to a funky place to take pictures? Or is this about Michael revealing something to us about these people?. I do not know. We don´t know if the distance is his or theirs. If his, then i agree with the comments asking for him to get closer in a personal way. But if theirs then this is what i feel through all these photos. That he does not belong. He is an observer. If that is the overriding cultural response to newcomers then i think it is fair of Michael to allow us to feel that. But i honestly do not find answers to my questions in either the text or the photos.
I like all the photos very much. I love the sense of steal blue cold and the softness makes me feel that even more. Like seeing the world through a constant fog of your own breath, a misting on your lens and glasses, a sense of forboding and being far, far from anyplace with an even remotely hospitable climate where only the hardy need apply. I do have a problem with #1 and #2. And i had a problem with these two the first time your essay was published on Burn. The first because of the very large area around the dog with no information. It´s white but not snow white. I am distracted by how over-exposed it is and it loses its effectiveness. #2 is so heavily post processed it looks artificial. I would love to see this same photo presented in a more realistic processing style. It would serve to highlight the bleakness of these apartment units. As it is now it looks like a model train village. 1&2 are very inconsistent with the rest of the work, in my opinion.
Congratulations and best of luck to you, Michael, in the final decision.
best:
kat
I think its the most beautiful LOOKING essay among the finalists but not one that really tells me what the photographer tells me it tells me. Yes, Kathleen, he was a foreigner dropping in and it shows and its what I think is the weakness of it. There are some beautiful, graphic photos and to be honest I never cared about over exposures or technicals, no offense but I think people focus on the too much, I think it is a filler critique to be honest. Remember we talked about Capa’s quote about being close? Many of Capa’s photos were pretty bad technically but we dont care about that because Capa’s photos were close, as in commited and in there. This essay, while beautiful, really does make me feel like it was shot here and there without much of that commitment to get in and really expose what the photographer was photographing. Its weakness for me then is the focus on the graphics and aesthetics, and lack of any real meat. I knew nothing about Sakhalin before I saw this essay the first time on Burn and I know nothing about it after seeing 2 edits of it.
Im sorry to break the rule of posts per essay but I cant edit my post above…
I think that if I were granting money I would award it for this essay. For all its shortcomings that I mentioned I think it is the one that has most room to grow, and most potential to explode. If Michael took the money and went to live there for a year and really shot this story from the inside it would be spectacular, because he has the beautiful aesthetics already and even what we have here is already good. Im looking at the essays and really this one has most potential to bridge a gap that leads to greatness.
Heya all, sorry just posting now but have had family in town so…
Sidney & Charles: Interesting and I would say ‘yes.’ Growing up on farmland and always outside inspired a sensitivity to and inspiration from the land, an appreciation and understanding of the natural world, sense of place, that I may have never had, or had as much of, growing up in NYC per se…
Wendy: thanks….definitely want to return and spend more time on Sakhalin. This is less than a month of work….not enough…but it’s expensive to go, which is why I haven’t gone since early 08
Maqroll: interesting and agree with you somewhat…the questioning….the ‘new world of poetry’….the ‘shifting’…..brings to mind something hemingway said about writing:
‘…For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him. I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it…’
sakhalin is similar to other pictures/projects in the past and, depending on who is viewing, may or may not be anything new….but as said in a posting when the story was originally published on burn, I was sent to the island on assignment and it was my first time in russia and the only purpose for going there…as before the assignment, I had no plans/inspiration to go there….so the series is not an attempt to recreate, in a different way, something I had already seen…so many great photographers have already done this….after completing the assignment I made the return trip to visit friends made and see more of the island…the aim being not to go to this place to try and make a story/essay/series that is unique and powerful and revealing…but to just have an experience while photographing along the way…and I feel lucky to have a few pictures that capture at least the memory of that experience…
Kat: thanks for taking the time to comment….i agree with several things….
But just to clarify – this series is not an attempt to make a statement about the people of Sakhalin….it was not photographed and edited in this way to show what is ‘beneath the surface’…to ‘get inside,’ reveal their soul or culture, pinpoint who they are or otherwise define them…these photographs are also not an attempt to paint an objective and factual portrait of the place or to convey what the ‘overriding cultural response’ to an outsider is….and they certainly are not an objective analysis and were not taken in an attempt to be ‘fair’ to differing perceptions….perhaps I gave the wrong impression, but the series is an exploration of a mood I experienced…the photographs are commenting on what I found interesting and are attempts at evoking a tone through a series of imagery… I was not trying to ‘say’ anything…You are correct that I was, in a sense, an ‘observer’ who did not ‘belong’….having just under a month to create this imagery, much time was spent just on logistics and traveling around the island to get to these locations…most of the imagery was made while traveling from one place to the next to get a taste of as many locations as possible….a fishing trip, in a way…
Thanks, everybody, for the comments
mike
AKMA(aka Civi) Help me, I’m loosing the love and dumping on Lance. I know he’s a good guy, but he’s not diggin’ deep enuf. Too many others have gone down that road and come back with just crumbs.
I want Lance to get the nugget. Can you help? I promise great BBQ! Please tune in. It starts with Butt Rub and a Coke with salted peanuts.
As much I like this essay, and I do very much so, I also think the author could get closer to the subjects. Still, I agree with what Herve said about this fitting in Nat Geo magazine. Overall, it’s truly a great essay
Sakhalin is home to one of the worlds biggest oil and gas developments – Sakhalin energy. This development has had a direct effect on the local economy, as well as a detramental effect on local ineginious populations. The capital, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, has experienced enormous growth since the onset of the Sakhalin 2 project. The city itself is a mecca for wealthy Russian and Japanese holiday makers. But if you go outside of Yuzhno you will see desperation and utter poverty.The contrast of the two is just epic.
Really nice pictures, but it doesn’t really say much about Sakhalin Island.