David Harp Lecture

David Harp's lecture and slideshow about the Chesapeake area was very interesting. He is a very personable individual and made the information he presented captivating through both his work and the manner in which he spoke about the images. He told his story and experiences via his striking images. He described himself as more of a photojouralist rather than an artistic photographer since he likes to do editorial work, but his photos are simply stunning. It was neat to meet someone who has graduated from OU and has made a professional living doing the thing he loves. He has published several books and has been featured in magazines like Time and Newsweek. He explained his process of taking photos and mentioned that the best lighting has a very narrow window of time— around 10 minutes or so before or after sunrise and sunset. He likes to catpture the people and wildlife of the bay as well as the landscapes; he also has a special affinity for taking pictures of reflections in the shallow water of the bay.

Harp discussed more of his recent work as well which more directly deals with the current environmental issues concerning the bay. He showed pictures he took in the 70s of "watermen" collecting oysters and then showed how they now grow oysters instead of collect them today since only about 1% of the original population is still around. This is an issue because the oysters help to filter the water in the bay from outside pollution. He also mentioned that many of the underground grasses are dying off from this abundance of pollution. He has photographed people in the local crab business and explained that today most of the workers are immigrants from Mexico; I made a connection to this statement about the many immigrants that have found work in the meatpacking industry. Harp went on to document and discuss how many of the islands that make up the bay are flooding over and will not be there for much longer. He showed several images of a single house from the 1800s left standing in the middle of a former island surrounded by water. There had been efforts in the past to try to restore these islands, but the efforts have mostly been in vain. He showed a photo of a nest that birds had made in a forklift that had been used for this effort and joked that, "obviously, the birds have won." The issues he presented were mostly informative without being preachy and the manner in which he presented (mostly through his visual work) was very effective and captivating.