As photographers, what do we do between big projects? In between thinking about something else? To keep our mind’s eye active and a state to receive what the world is showing us? According to Minor White’s “The Camera Mind and Eye”, the ability to stay sensitive and vigilant with camera in hand produces something interesting, eventually, something subconsciously turbulent.

 If [the photographer] were to walk a block in a state of sensitized sympathy to everything to be seen, he would be exhausted before the block was up and out of film long before that. Perhaps the blank state of mind can be likened to a pot of water almost at the boiling point. A little more heat—an image seen—and the surface breaks into turbulence. Possibly the creative work of the photographer consists in part of putting himself into this state of mind. Reaching it, at any rate, is not automatic. It can be aided by always using one’s camera for serious work so that the association of the camera in one’s hands always leads to taking pictures.

Carrying a small digital or 35mm camera is conducive to achieving this state of mind. Whenever I came back to Hickory I tried hard to keep one on me at all times to spark something whenever I wasn’t out on more serious photographing or onto a place where I knew what I wanted. It kept me open and sensitive.

Over the years this practice became more serious to me. I waited a while when I got the film or files back, scanned a few frames, edited them, and kept them hanging around on hard drives. But what does this work mean? Each picture seemed like a sentence out of longer narrative, a separate thought that somehow accompanied some larger feeling about whatever was going on in my life. Whenever I reached White’s boiling point, the pictures became curtailed stories and occasional bits of prose.

I put these bits into a new zine called “Occasional Prose” and it features small moments I’ve found over a couple years. Staying vigilant, approaching boiling temperatures.

Buy it here + view more images from the project

Stefano Marchionini is a photographer who has always engaged me by the range and quality of his work. Whether shooting in color or black-and-white, a very intimate and relatable quality comes across that never seems to dwindle after repeated viewings. Marchionini recently released a self-published book titled, I see around me tombstones grey, that focuses on his relationship with his parents after being away for an extended amount of time and the feeling of “home” that his parents bring to him, even when the physical locations of “home” may have changed.

The book is a strong testament to what smart editing and simple design can do to allow for images to speak for themselves and breathe. The pacing of the book is evenly spread between sequences that build to a sense of short-lived intimacy; short-lived, because as soon as one may start to feel a sense of nostalgia or love take form, a reminder of the fragility of life is suddenly thrown in. The finite quality of our relationships with those we love is a hard universal truth that Marchionini reflects upon throughout the book.

Conversely, the imagery often rejoices in the lighter and mundane moments between the photographer and his parents. An image titled, “my father in the garden,” shows Marchionini’s father working in a garden that seems to slowly engulf him despite all of his attempts at pruning. It is an action that seems important while doing but one that in the scope of things, really doesn’t matter as the garden will outlive us all. Subtle reflections like these build upon the theme of the book to guide the viewer through their own thoughts and feelings, a trip that requires multiple visits to really grasp what is being said, but is luckily made easy through the craft of the photographer.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and please check out more of Marchionini’s work on his website and flickr.

Missy Prince has been making a name for herself through her photography over the past several years. Her Flickr stream is an instruction manual on wandering and learning how to see subtle and and sometimes haunting beauty in the every day. She’s been wandering a lot—through Mississippi, the American Southwest, through Washington and Oregon and back down South again. What she’s seeing feels familiar yet simultaneously fresh way that only comes with an esteemed sense of a personal voice. It’s straight photography done exceedingly and consistently well. There’s something to that consistency in the way she floats between landscapes, people she knows and doesn’t know, still lives, and of course vernacular architecture. I’ve been interested in getting between Missy Prince’s mind’s eye and camera for a while now—her photographs beckon more from me and I was excited to get an opportunity to read her words.

Empty Stretch: Age/Location/Three favorite things in life:

Missy Prince: I’m 42 and I live in Portland, Oregon. I don’t really think in terms of favorites, but I like driving around, records, my dog.

ES: Can you pinpoint a specific photograph or moment in time that got you to start taking pictures for yourself?

MP: It was a slow evolution. I went through a few photography phases, but I was never happy with any photos I took until a few years ago when I started carrying an Olympus XA everywhere. I shot compulsively until it started making sense. I remember getting a roll of film back that had about five better than average photos with a sensibility I could see as my own. It was a small but noticeable turning point.

ES: How important is making C-prints to your approach?

MP: At this point it’s pretty integral. About a year ago I decided to incorporate the darkroom into my workflow because I like to have prints rather than negative scans, and the average lab print leaves a lot to be desired. The satisfaction of having a physical copy that I printed myself is so great that it is hard to imagine cutting the darkroom out of the equation. I like having control over the final product.

ES: Some of my favorite images of yours evoke religion. Churches, Christ-figures, crosses, and other singage; it spans across your pictures from the South to the Northwest. Can you speak on these? Is it something you’re conscious of in your everyday life or is it something your camera just finds?

MP: I’ve often wondered why a random cross or church can stop me in my tracks. I’m not religious, but I was dragged to church the first twelve or so years of my life. Being there always felt strange to me, I never could relate to the experience. I stared at a lot of crosses as a child, so perhaps photographing them is a way of revisiting my past. But I think it fits within a more general interest in where people find meaning in their lives. Religion is one of the more obvious places, but it is an attractive subject because it’s so loaded. I’m usually drawn to scenes that lean toward the peculiar or askew: a truck stop chapel, a broken steeple lying on a church lawn, a prayer box in a parking lot, a proclamation of faith on a satellite dish. I don’t think about religion in my everyday life and I don’t look for it as a subject but I eventually find it, especially in the South.

ES: Conversely, how do you deal with the tougher subject matters like adult book stores, bail bonds agencies, liquor stores?

MP: They are just places I’m attracted to. I don’t feel like they are challenging or tough. They are interesting places in interesting parts of towns. I think they fit very well next to the religious imagery. My interest in them is like my interest in, say, Tom Waits’ album Small Change or some old blues lyrics. Hard times are doorways to the unknown. People go to weird places through them, and you wonder how they got there. It’s more interesting than joy or contentment.

ES: What is your relationship to some of the people you photograph? They’re seldom seen in your work but when you make a portrait there’s some intimacy there I’m eager to know about.

MP: I used to photograph only friends, but lately I’ve become more interested in photographing strangers because it is a different kind of experience. I’ve always been a people watcher but the habit has taken a long time to find its way into my photography, partly because it’s harder to interact with people than with objects. Taking that next step and actually engaging with the people I notice is suddenly exciting. The camera gives me an excuse to enter their lives. I like to spend time with them and hear them talk. Maybe that’s where the sense of intimacy comes through. I get to find things out about them that I might not learn if I just passively observed them. I don’t know the kid with the basketball, but the place is very close to me. It’s the street I grew up on. Last time I went home he and his friends were outside my folks’ house playing basketball every day. The day before I left I went out and got his picture. Right before I snapped it he said he wanted to be a porn star.

ES: There’s obviously a musical facet to your work, as well, as traveling and walking. I had the opportunity not too long ago to go through a Flickr slideshow of your greatest hits and it felt like reading a short novel to me. No chapters, but a sort of stream-of-consciousness writing that reverts back to previous thoughts and wildly new ones. How much do you feel literature is a part of your process and work (if at all?)

MP: It’s a big part. I think photography and literature are both driven by the impulse to show something about life, to give our observations some kind of form. There was a time when I wanted to write. The desire isn’t so strong now, but I can see a connection between it and the role that photography plays in my life. Both involve imposing a narrative onto experience, noticing details, making connections, figuring out what is important or interesting about a situation and trying to put it into a form that makes you feel something. So much of the literature that moves me has a wandering theme. Stories from the road, people on the move, on the run, or looking for something, the recurrence of the familiar amid uncertainty and change. Such work is reflective of the spirit that made it. It carries the charge of life, always moving, always searching. My process is very much about wandering, being out in the world and coming back with pieces of a story that is hopefully held together by the thread of my own sensibility. I don’t know exactly what I will find when I set out, and that is the point. Photography, like writing, is a means of discovery, a filling in of (or working around) blanks, a fleshing out of ideas or feelings. I imagine that if the urge to write returns it will somehow be informed by what I’ve learned from taking and editing photos.

ES: What are you currently reading?

MP: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell and Bitter Music by Harry Partch.

ES: Where is your photography headed in 2013?

MP: I hope to get back to Mississippi and continue some work there.

We hope you do, Missy. Thanks! Be sure check out her Flickr stream, Tumblr, and do yourself a favor and purchase an 8×10.

It come’s in a xerox cardstock sleeve, black & white with a beautifully cyan out of focus portrait, gold text scribbled across in messy cursive. As I pull the book from the sleeve, I almost immediately realize, he has accomplished in one book, what I have been trying with Empty Stretch releases for years; he has kept the ethos & feel of a zine, yet translated it into book form. Photos taped in, sporadically arranged, collaged, notes written; he has stepped right inline behind the greats of Jim Goldberg’s “Raised by Wolves” & Ed Templeton’s “The Golden Age of Neglect.”

I first got into Berntsen’s work because of his photos & videos of bands & his closeness to them & I have stayed interested in his work because of that proximity. You can look at these photos & know he cares about his subjects, some faces repeat, & you can actively see the transitions of his friends, whether physically or geographically. He has spent years with these people & this is their yearbook of sorts & I can only hope to one day produce a body of work so drenched in passion & so footnoted with care.

If you haven’t previously seen his work, I urge you to get a copy of the book, as well as take another look at his website, he is constantly adding new photos & videos.

You can email him at chris@chrisberntsen.com or pick up a copy at Dashwood Books in New York.

fts, “I Want to Die A-Shouting”

Empty Stretch: Age/Location/Three favorite things in life:

Johnathon Kelso: I’m 29, I live in Atlanta, Georgia. My three favorite things are my mother, my dog, and the Trinity (cheated a bit on that last one.)

ES: What are the Sacred Harp Singers? How did you first get started with photographing I Want to Die A-Shouting?

JK: Sacred Harp singers are people just like you and me – anyone can sing this music. Both young and old alike for many generations have came together and sang these praises to God. Sacred Harp or “shape-note” singers refers to those who commonly sing from a popular hymnal like the Sacred Harp, or something similar that uses shape note notation to aid along in the sight reading process. It’s full throated singing, bringing people from all different walks of life together. You don’t have to be classically trained or have a pretty voice, you just need to be willing to have some fun and do some singing. I had been singing for a good while before I started this body of work. It took a lot for me to put down my song book long enough to do anything else but sing. It’s funny too, because once I started photographing at singings, it was never the actual singing that I was interested in. I wanted folks to see the love Sacred Harp singers have for one another and the joy that comes from these times we spend singing. In doing so, the visual work was taken away from the hollow and square and to more intimate settings like the back pew of the church where a mother would be teaching her son to sing, or drawing near with friends to sing at the bedside of those passing away. I wanted to soar above the music and tradition a bit and get to the hearts of the people who join together in song.

fts, “I Want to Die A-Shouting”

fts, “I Want to Die A-Shouting”

ES: I acquaint singing in a group like that to the act of photography itself. You really do bear a lot of yourself out to the public, more or less, and in a way that’s somewhat immediate. How do people respond to you when you ask to make their picture?

JK: I reckon people always surprise you and you can get a handful of different reactions throughout a day. Oftentimes at singings people are familiar with me wielding my camera around and it gives me a chance to talk to people a little better and get to know them. Outside that arena though, reactions are always of mixed degree. People in the south are always wanting to understand what I see in them or their surroundings that is worth while. I’ve gotten into the habit of giving my camera to strangers and have them look through the viewfinder to see for themselves what might be beautiful.

ES: What are your favorite songs to sing?

JK: If we are talking Sacred Harp jams, I tend to lean towards the minor tunes or songs with poetry that draws my mind back to where it needs to be. One of my favorite’s in the Denson book, 397 The Fountain, goes – “There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel’s veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood, Lose all their guilty stains.” Those just aren’t words you hear sung in most churches these days.

fts, “I Want to Die A-Shouting”

ES: What does it mean to be a Christian working in the art world?

JK: As I mature in what it means to know Jesus, I struggle with how being a Christian not only affects this arena of my life, but all aspects of living in general. In the past couple of years I’ve wrestled a lot with trying to figure out what it means to be a Christian man holding a camera. God has given me a gift that allows me to approach strangers and interact with them on a personal level within minutes. Getting to know the people whose lives I’m documenting and hearing their stories is important to me. My hope is that whatever it is I’m doing, whether it be working with a camera or simply befriending people I meet, that they would come to know and see Jesus through our interaction together.

fts, “Ongoing”

fts, “Mountain View”

ES: What first attracted me to your work was that I didn’t see any of the normal aspects of the South that first come to viewers minds when they hear “Southern” — how do you contend with the rich history that precedes this part of America?

JK: Well, I guess people first have to realize is that the South, just like anything else is rapidly changing. Those iconic images that Eggleston and Christenberry shot are still out there, but there’s also so much more still on the table yet to be captured. Because the South is trying on different forms and the landscape is encountering small changes, even the oldest relics take on a new face. My eye will always go first to the images I’ve come to know and love about the south just like everyone else, but to stop looking there is to rob yourself of a great treasury that this part of America has on offer.

ES: When did you first start taking photographs?

I first starting making photographs in 2006 while living in Memphis, Tennessee.

JK: Can you describe your most recent body of work “Mountain View”? How did you approach photographing this town and its people?

Essentially, it’s the documentation of a town that was. Mountain View is the the only town in Georgia history to be abolished by the Georgia State legislature. Folk stories and rumors of why the town eventually disbanded differ from person to person but the arching theme that is prevalent in all stories pins the Atlanta airport’s destructive and expansive need for and more land as the cause to why thousands of residents were “bought out” and moved. Churches, schools, and businesses alike slowly but surely boarded up, shut down, and were bulldozed over to make room for the megaplex of the future which now stands proudly as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The work focuses on what remains, who remained, and who moved in.

fts, “Mountain View”

After work everyday I’d drive just outside Atlanta and explore this place. It was fascinating to me that know one talked about it or knew it existed. Some of the new business owners I interviewed had no idea that the land they worked on (thought to be a bypass between Hapeville and Forest Park) used to be a town in itself. Beyond the kudzu, just feet beyond store fronts, were whole maps and grids of road and remnants of where people scratched out their livelihood. It seemed like a living tomb holding onto dying parts of itself and all the while harboring drifters and woebegone’s. Most people I photographed were quiet and wanted their privacy. A lot of folk never answered their doors no matter how many times I stopped by or left notes explaining my presence. It was very difficult tracking down the original community members to photograph, so a lot of what you see in the work are people living on the fringes of the place – people living in the woods in secret huts covered by brush or pastors holding onto small congregations and waiting for just the right time to sell their properties to the Airport buyers.

fts, “Mountain View”

fts, “Ongoing”

ES: What are you up to now? What does this year hold for you and your photography?

JK: I am still figuring that all out. I put down the camera for a bit after the Mountain View work and have only recently started shooting again. I’ve been thinking a lot about Grey Villet’s work in the late 60′s when he documented interracial marriage in the south and how that might look different today. If I shoot anything of value this year, I’d want it to be something like that.

Can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon, thanks, Johnathon!

Empty Stretch: Age/ Location/ Favorite things in life?

Katherine Squier: 24, soon enough 25 / Austin, Texas/ good hugs, belly laughs, traveling, music, kind people, natural light, finding the right words, feeling grateful, animals

ES: What got you into photography? What keeps you photographing?

KS: I just decided to try it out as a hobby, I had been seeing a lot of commercials for nice cameras and thought it would be a good investment. I would randomly go out and take photos at first but then fell hard after my dad gave me his Canon Ae-1 after cleaning out the attic. I take my camera everywhere with me because it feels like I’m missing a piece of myself if I don’t. It also feels like an ultimate type of awareness, like I’m really appreciating my life by acknowledging and capturing the uniqueness and beauty in all the moments.

ES: Who is your favorite person to photograph? Who is someone you’ve always wanted to photograph?

KS: Both of these question are hard- I don’t know if I have a favorite person, I love photographing all the people I’m close to. I have never thought about who I would love to photograph, as there are so many people out there that I think would be so interesting to capture!

ES: You seem to be extremely attracted to light & it’s placement, it makes it seem like you’re more interested in an internal moment as opposed to external. Is this something you’re conscious of & does that make the photos hold a special place for you?

KS: I love interviews because a lot of the time the interviewer has insightful questions about my work and it even helps me gain better perspective sometimes. I take photos never trying to produce a certain type of look or feel, I just go with instinct, so your observation about light and internal moments hit a chord with me. Light moves me and I think it places a special spotlight (no pun intended!) on each moment– the most ordinary, mundane scenes become beautiful and heightened experiences with the right light. So it’s much more an internal recognition of what I see as the external manifestation of how special a moment is? Photos with special light aren’t necessarily more special than other ones, but light is a powerful factor in terms of what moves me.

ES: You’re Ground work photographs seem very much about mark making & remind me a lot of abstract paintings, is that something you are influenced by or interested in?

KS: I wouldn’t say it influences me but I have been developing more of an interest in it since I started photography.

ES: Your portraits show very little if any of people’s faces is this for their sake or your own?

KS: I’ve always wanted to show people’s full faces but unfortunately because most of my photos are of my close friends and family, and during times when they aren’t necessarily wanting to be “seen,” photographing them when you can’t see their face is the only option I have in that moment, out of respect for their privacy and not having my camera always intruding into their lives. Also, my sister is a big subject of mine and she almost never wants her face shown. For all other cases, unless they are obviously happy I am photographing them, it’s because I’m afraid it would make them uncomfortable since I can get that way when someone wants to photograph me.

ES: Who has the best beard you’ve ever seen?

KS: My future husband? (kidding, kidding– maybe)

ES: What is your favorite place you have been?

KS: So hard. Over my entire life, I honestly don’t know!

ES: Any projects we should be keeping an eye out for?

KS: I spent 5 months solo in Europe traveling around during the later part of 2012, and I’m self-publishing a photo book out of the mass amount of film I shot. It’s taking me a while now that I have more obligations than ever— but it’s happening. And I’m excited– so keep an eye out for it and get excited too! :)

Please find more of Katherine’s work on her website & tumblr.

• Hymn Book For The Anxiety Induced
• As I Was Chasing You
• (Something with city slicker in title)
• What A Mess…
• Rejoice! That We’re Born Again
• Nathaniel, This Is Your Life

Hopefully something more physical will come of all of this in the coming months but for now, here’s the tip of the iceberg.

Ashley Sauers

Jacob Fogel

Iago Barreiro

Dhanainun Dhanarachwattana

Amanda Hall

Nicholas Luvaul

Kamil I

Lisa Smit

Thanks to everyone who has joined our flickr group, Petty Thieves. If you haven’t yet joined, you probably should get a move on and do so already!

Check out even more work on Busby’s webpage.

fts Open Water

fts Amsterdam

fts Mystery School

fts Amsterdam

fts Rapture

fts Mystery School

fts Open Water

Please find more of Matthew’s work at his website.