You've Never Seen Photos of Nature Like These: Barry Underwood's Electric Landscapes

By Terrell Johnson Published: Jun 25, 2014, 2:53 PM EDT weather.com

Blue Line

Blue Line

Photo courtesy Barry Underwood

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Cleveland-based photographer Barry Underwood wants to tell everyone who looks at his work a story about man and nature, but he doesn't want to do it in a "heavy-handed way," he says.

"Rather in a way that draws attention in a pleasing way," he adds, and it's hard to argue he's done anything but that in his series of photographs he calls simply "Scenes," which are a kind of meditation on humans' impact on the natural world.

Underwood shared some of his work with weather.com, as well as his thoughts on what inspires his photos and how he creates themm:

How did you orchestrate the photos? What goes into creating them?

Everything starts from a drawing. Sometimes, I have an existing idea and I look for a landscape that will fit that particular idea. Other times, when I am new to an environment, I investigate the terrain, research its history and make photographs of the location. Then I make drawings or rough sketches based on ideas inspired by the new landscape.

The light-emitting sculptures in the landscape use a variety of materials, including glow sticks and LED lights. The film is exposed for 15 minutes to 6 hours, depending upon the weather conditions, ambient lighting conditions and goal for the final results for the image.

All of the installations have a structural support system fabricated from common building materials -- rebar tie-wire, wooden dowels, pulleys and often rope. The building process for the support system can be smaller in scale and take a half hour to construct, or it can take several days.

The longest install took several weeks. Most often, they (the installs) take two full 12-hour days. This, of course, is followed by a full night of photographing.   

How do you choose the places where you shoot the photos?

I have been working primarily at artist residencies around the U.S. and Canada: the Banff Center in Alberta, Canada; I-Park in East Haddam, Connecticut; The Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah; The Headlands Center for the Arts, in Sausalito, California; and most recently The MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

I travel to these places for several reasons: They all have various types of landscape within or near their property, they allow me to build my artwork on location, and they are artistically rich environments, where I can meet, converse and collaborate with artists, writers and musicians.

Because of the Banff Center’s strong environmental awareness program, I have become more attentive to environmental issues, including global concerns like pollution, land use, and climate change in my artwork. It was also at the Banff Center that I began reading the philosophy of John Muir and consequently developed new strategies for creating site-specific installations and photographs. In many of my photographs, there is the artifice that some environmental disaster has taken place, though the specific narrative remains elusive.

What is the significance of the orange orbs, the river of red light, the blue circles around the trees?

Curiosity about the ecological and social history of specific places drives my work. I’m particularly interested in the connection between human-made landscape patterns and cultural norms. Each photograph is a sort of dialogue, the result of my direct encounter with nature and historical research. Each shape or intrusion into the landscape does not have a specific singular reference, but is a blend of my scientific and artistic research. My inspiration comes from art mostly, painting, installation, drawing, photography, and cinema. I am also inspired or rather influenced by science and nature and its energy. 

What story are you trying to tell with your work? How do these photos fit into that story?

I am working in the art historical context of landscape; be it painting, land art or cinema. Landscape allows for a certain type of storytelling. The history of landscape is encapsulates the ideas of the sublime nature, humankind’s power over nature, and nature’s power over humans My attempt is to portray environmental issues that are not delivered in a heavy-handed way. Rather in a way that draws attention in a pleasing way, then if contemplated could unfold a message of dissidence or a natural discord.

Find out more at Barry Underwood's photography website.

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