Angles of Vision

By Mark Vinz
Contributing Writer

When one lives in a region as subtle and understated as ours, one indeed develops particular ways of discovering and appreciating it—indeed, of seeing it—just as one looks for those who might share a particular vision, no matter what the medium.  This certainly relates to what our late friend Bill Holm called “the prairie eye,” the part of us that appreciates both the magnitude of a place and its delicacy—that is able to discover a universe within a square foot. 

“People neglect prairies as scenery because they require time and patience to comprehend,” he writes.  Thankfully, we’ve had poets such as Bill Holm and Thomas McGrath, and photographers such as Wayne Gudmundson and Leo Kim, who have developed the patience and the angle of vision so necessary in beginning to truly appreciate the places where we live.
Indeed, it was from Tom McGrath that I first learned to pay attention to what was around me—that here was ever so much more than merely uninteresting flatness (of both landscape and local culture).  Aside from his poet’s eye, Tom was well versed in the history of the place, especially from the Indian past, through the homesteading era and the subsequent farm movements in the early 20th century.  Whenever he wrote about this region, as in his master work Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Tom’s focus always seemed concerned with reminding us that it can be truly fascinating—though one has to take the time to get out of the car, so to speak, and learn to really experience it.
This passion for seeing—and with seeing, discovering—is something that can unite the poet and photographer, the written and the visual image.  And it’s certainly something we find in Carll Goodpasture’s book of photographs Imagining Place. As Goodpasture explains in his preface, the book is an homage to a region where he once lived, with particular interest in what he calls its “native spirit,” and in a vision of the interconnectedness of all life that arises from that spirit.  Indeed, his inspiration is as much from the beliefs of Native American visionaries such as Black Elk (whose words are quoted throughout the book), as from the land itself, to which he also brings the concerns of a contemporary biologist and ecologist.
The result of Goodpasture’s multi-faceted homage is a series of stunning photographs, ranging from settings in the Minnesota lake country to the prairies, from the headwaters of the Mississippi to the Buffalo and Red rivers, and ending with several scenes from the city of Moorhead—a section which, in a substantial essay at the end of the book, Peter Bevan calls representative of “the now unsubtle and ominous incursions of man onto the prairies.”
I can’t pretend to approach Imagining Place and what lies behind it with the kind of expertise that Bevan (a faculty member of the Glasgow School of Art) develops—and his review essay is truly a bonus to the book.  What I can note is that the delicacy and amazing composition of these black and white photos can provide a moving and enriching experience for the reader.  There are relatively few shots set in nature that might be called “panoramic” here.  More often, Goodpasture focuses on the close at hand—on leaves strewn on the forest floor, ripples on a lakeshore, or shadows on snow—the very things we take for granted and overlook.
As a writer, perhaps what I value most in Carll Goodpasture’s book is the kind of artistic interconnectedness shared among so many prairie poets, photographers and artists.  One of those poets, Ted Kooser, our former U.S. Poet Laureate, said it both well and simply:  “I delight in the things I discover right within reach.”  Just so, Imagining Place has a great deal to delight us in discovering.
All proceeds from the book will go to the Hjemkomst Center in Moorhead, where copies of the book are also available: http://www.hjemkomst-center.com, as well as at Zandbroz Variety and the Spirit Room.

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