Walking Winter
Here in Minnesota, where we usually spend the post-holidays buried in snow and bundling up against sub-zero temperatures, we experienced a lovely extended autumn that now seems to have skipped us ahead a few calendar months. The last week has felt like a perfect stretch of late March. We’ve been breaking high temperature marks all over the state. I’ve been nostalgic enough, in fact, that I’ve spent several nights hunting through photo books for some of my favorite winter images. Here are some that made the cut.
Vivian Maier, March 18, 1955, New York, NY.
Pentti Sammallahti, Solovki, White Sea, Russia, 1992.
Elin Høyland
Bruce Davidson, American Elms – The Mall in Central Park, 1994.
Emmet Gowin, View of Rennie Booher’s house. Danville, Virginia, 1973.
Nobuyoshi Araki, from (Sentimental Journey and Winter Journey, 1991)
I am excited to see the images Martin Parr makes in MN.
What are your favorite winter photographs? And is there any one photographer –or even several– that you particularly associate with the season?
LITTLE BROWN MUSHROOM BLOG 
These photos inspire me to make some winter photographs- but I live in Ct. and alas there is no winter here either.
Winter in Belgium is still winter.
Giacomelli’s photos of priests in the snow:
http://www.google.com/search?q=giacomelli&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=MDUPT-TTI8Xv0gGngf2HAw&ved=0CCoQsAQ&biw=1273&bih=863
and Frank Hurley’s photos of The Endurance
Funny, I was in the process of posting this to my site when I got a notification of your post. After last winter, I can’t say I’m anywhere nostalgic for winter — just getting nervous that if there isn’t a winter during the winter months, then when? Are we going to get three feet of snow on the Fourth of July?
http://chieftainstudio.com/p211843844/e1e69f17c
I can’t help but think of Thomas Fletchner and his book, Snow. Also, not photography, but Robert Frost poems keep reciting themselves in my head.
After Lars Tunbjörk did Vinter I associate him with the season http://www.agencevu.com/stories/index.php?id=575&p=80
Same here in Germany, the winter is missing. Started a series of tree portraits covered with frost in 2007… since them I’m waiting for nearly the same weather to finish that project…. seems it will not happen this year again :-(.
Link: http://www.joachim-riederer.de/blog/?page_id=36
The picture by Emmet Gowin I also looked up yesterday night while remembering the past winters. Another great work comes from Augustin Rebetez, have spent a lot of time with his pictures these days.
It is interesting that you choosed pictures from two books that went nearly unnoticed by the end of year lists. The brothers from Elin Hoyland was for me the best book of 2011. Vivian maier´s is very good too.
I like photography that is made with heart. Elin Høyland and Vivian Maier both shoot from the heart.
Well, i couldn´t have said it better. Thank you for the post.
Snow + Dogs + Old Men…wonderful.
I’m also a fan of this equation: Snow + Windows + Erotic Longing:
http://alecsothblog.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/the-scientist-of-minneapolis-the-poet-of-prague/
I would say William Eggleston’s works reminds me of summer and spring…
Great set.
One of my favorites is “Walk the Dog” by David Goldes. I first saw it on LBM…
http://dreamdogsart.typepad.com/art/2010/12/walk-the-dog-by-david-goldes.html
Great post to get me thinking, on Monday I am off to take up a two month residency for the S-AIR (Sapporo Artist in Residency), Japan. I’m expecting average temps of minus five degrees Celsius and 1.5m of snow!
As for winter photos that inspire me…
Mark Power has some amazing photographs taken in the depths of Polish winter on his site: http://www.markpower.co.uk
Takashi Homma has some interesting images of the Japanese winter landscape (this is the only link I can find with examples): http://runnersinfo.org/wp/?p=544#more-544
And Koldelka’s famous image of a dog is captivating: http://tinyurl.com/7k5w7ja
Have to admit though, it’s pretty hard to beat Araki’s Sentimental Journey / Winters Journey. What a beautiful, poetic and sad piece of work.
Reblogged this on Camera Works.
For me winter brings to mind Kertesz (looking down on the tracks in snow), Callahan (grass or sticks poking up through snow), and Fukase (dead raven in snow).
Koudelka’s Great Dane Silhouette in the French snow…
another vote for this photography,
Chris Killip’s photographs of seacoalers always looked very cold to me
cold and grim, but where i call home – still never as cold as MN winters though
Ok this is painting, but Peter Doig sure has a feeling for snow. http://www.google.fr/search?q=peter+doig+snow+paintings&hl=fr&client=firefox-a&hs=Fiz&rls=org.mozilla:fr:official&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=OgEQT9uwHpDpOejK2aAD&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1138&bih=553
Sudek did winter well, I think.
My favourite is the aptly titled ‘Winterreise’ – A documentation of a journey across Russia by Luc Delahaye.
Ever since you posted this I have been trying to find my copy of Tom Arndt’s “Home”. I am sure there are some great winter photographs in there. But alas I cannot locate it. I have a vague recollection of lending it to a student. Hmmm….now who could that be?
Snow + Window + Tulips
http://jonanoj.blogspot.com/2009/01/tulips-two-weeks-old-today-new-snow.html
Yo, alec…and lbm tribe….
winter, descend here alas like a branch snapped by thought, at last….thought for a while about this….was going to (ego) post a link to a series I did about winter and then to a series my wife did about winter and than to a series of books/photos i’ve always loved about winter from Giacomelli to Koudelka to Mikhailov to Jukka O to Moryiama to well, a library of images in my head and on our bookshelves….and then, i thought, above all, even more than pictures, Winter reminds me of home….not specially a place, per se, but the notion of home…of being lost and aching a way back, of dying and then recovering, of bodies clenched and heart’s tucked aside in the corner and of all that winter means: the need to be in that one place that houses the heart and builds the body from the loss of all the things covered and caping from the winter snag….so, instead of a photo or book or essay from a photographer, i’ll leave something I always loved by Beckett…in a sense it has always spoken to me of both…..winter and what winter points toward, home:
cheers…..bb
“NEITHER
to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself
by way of neither
as between two lit refuges whose doors once
neared gently close, once away turned from
gently part again
beckoned back and forth and turned away
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam
or the other
unheard footfalls only sound
till at last halt for good, absent for good
from self and other
then no sound
then gently light unfading on that unheeded
neither
unspeakable home
–Samuel Beckett
The snow scenes in Fukase’s “The Solitude of Ravens” are pretty spellbinding.
http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=89
These snowscapes because I have yet to see any others like them:
http://www.davinellicson.com/#/Romania/Maramures%20/2/
Hi there, thank you for this very nice selection.
As everybody’s posting his or her links, would it be possible to upgrade this blog and let us add 1 picture with each reply? It would be fun, sort of photographic-mixed-with-text reply.
Thank you, all the best,
Nicola Principato
Love your winter selection.Being a Northerner but living in the South, I miss the quiet solitude of snow, the hibernating cold of winter, and winter light. These capture that so beautifully.