Colby Caldwell, 2020

We invite you to view our latest video release, featuring an exclusive look at the process behind Colby Caldwell's newest series, [the forest floor].

I have been wanting to find alternate ways to convey my process -- my way of working -- rather than relying on words. With this in mind, I collaborated with filmmaker Adam Larsen on a visual reflection of my current working methods to give a sense of how I find images and how nature finds me. The music is a particular favorite of mine that I have been playing on repeat over the last year. This is the first in a series of three short pieces about my current work.

My new work happens on the forest floor with a flatbed scanner as my makeshift camera. I’ve used the scanner-as-camera in my studio in the past. It occurred to me that I could take it out to the woods near my childhood home in Mills River, North Carolina for a new reconnaissance. For new inquiries. I think of it like collecting field recordings — allowing, listening, seeing.

I feel compelled to be in this landscape, working improvisationally with what I find. Branches, a stump stippled with fungi, desiccated leaves, stones, water -- seeing things in the forest where I learned how to play as a kid has led me to think about how a place becomes a place at all: by letting myself get lost there, I get at memories embedded.

Working with the scanner as a camera outside has opened possibilities to me again (this new series began in January 2020) and questions, too. How does the color we experience in nature find relationships with “found” color in the digital world? Lugging the scanner and computer into the woods has also delivered me back to the primary desire of photography: how to harness light, how to play with time.

I’ve spent quite a few years feeling visually silent. Taking my tools and my practice outside has connected me to my place, to that feeling and experience of locality where what was forgotten, can be remembered, made visible, and illuminated.

Artist: Colby Caldwell
Copyright: HEMPHILL Artworks
Filmmaker: Adam Larsen