Reading Response 2

There were many pieces of advice that I took from the interview with Bryan Schutmaat. I thought his intention and focus on his projects was remarkable. The images in his series Grays The Mountain Seeds were incredibly powerful. The series was on old mining regions out West. Bryan was from Texas and even though the area is known for its oil production his family all had jobs in other industries. He achieved some of the inspiration for the project through his dad who was in the working class. He also says that throughout the project many of the working-class men he met and photographed in these old mining towns reminded him of his dad. 

He then goes on to speak about the role his prior undergrad degree played in this project (not much as he reveals). His pure interest and curiosity in the wild west is what mostly fueled it. His creative process was centered around just going out and exploring, he didn’t want to overly research the areas. I found it interesting and also reinforced my current creative process in researching things but also not making shoots so scripted out that you don’t have the opportunity to be carried away in the moment.  A quote that he talks about from the poet Richard Hugo really spoke to me, “Knowing can be a limiting thing. If the population of a town is nineteen but the poem needs the sound seventeen, seventeen is easier to say if you don’t know the population.”