David Strohl and Aaron Canipe in One:One Thousand

 
One:One Thousand is featuring two photographers for the end of 2011, Austin, TX-based photographer David Strohl (see image above) and Washington, DC-based photographer Aaron Canipe.

David is showing a portfolio of color images made in Savannah, GA, entitled To Drift Savannah. Aaron has on offer a portfolio of B&W work entitled My Aggravating Ways (see image below).

David's work is, according to David, the result of his growth as a photographer as he has sought out the unfamiliar parts of the urban space that is most familiar to him.

As he has wandered the streets of Savannah, he has become aware of "the complexities of the area" as well as his own "progression of understanding." The result is a body of work that David believes reflects his discovery of "a rich tapestry of cultural heritage—the people, the details, and the landscape itself [that] have become a deep and interwoven narrative."

David clearly has learned to develop a rapport with people he meets in the street, a necessary component of the kind of photography he offers in this portfolio. His subjects become collaborators with him in the creation of images that engage Southerners in the course of their daily lives. His images are well-seen; he honors his subjects as he presents them to us. 

 

Aaron's work is more immediately personal, a meditation on the realities of pain, mortality, and loss instigated by the death of his grandfather Sam, a man to Aaron a "man of staunch independence and firm determination in love and faith."

Aaron here presents images that represent his goal of understanding his grandfather's world through images that become symbols, "concrete statues became dilapidated versions of our own mortality, bags on conveyor belts became coffin-like, and I saw jobs and tasks left undone all of which seemed to point to a Higher calling."

Aaron concludes, "After investigating his world, I realized his life had always seemed to point to something greater and perhaps spiritual. [T]he sorrows of death were fading away, only to reveal and follow the line of life past the grave and into a peaceful and natural afterlife."

This is challenging work for a photographer to take on, a search for depth within surface, for light in the gathering darkness. I suspect Aaron's grandfather would feel honored and appreciated by his grandson's efforts to apprehend his full measure as a man and to deal with his loss.