Still Feel Gone is a split zine/photobook thing from Tim Carpenter and Nathan Pearce and Deadbeat Club Press. It reminds me a bit of old split 7″ punk records, and in more than mere form, somehow.
Both sides work with trains, but from different viewpoints. Carpenter used a view camera—looks to me like 4×5—to photograph the rails themselves, and the silos and forests and creeks and fields and utility lines, so many utility lines, that abut them. Pearce shot 35mm from the trains themselves, the same or relevantly similar silos and forests and creeks and all, now blurred by motion as Pearce speeds by on the train.
In some instances, actually most of the way through Carpenter’s side, but also in Pearce’s set, the images feel like they’re adjacent, like Carpenter walked (or Pearce rode) by, snapping a photograph every 50 or 100 feet. I think they did, in some cases, but I also think it’s a symptom of what you see around and from American railroad lines, especially in the areas where they both tend to work.* It gives, for me, a sort of eerie, Twilight Zone feel to the set, though I’m sure that wasn’t intended.
Overall, I really like Still Feel Gone. It’s chock full of straight-forward large format landscape and handheld 35mm work in black & white film, and well worth picking up. I’m personally a fan of Nathan Pearce’s work and think we share some sympathies, though my photography looks nothing like his, and Tim Carpenter is right in there too, making me wish I could drag myself out with my 4×5 to shoot something.
Unrated.
Still Feel Gone remains available, at time of writing, direct from Deadbeat Club. And the link’s worth a click, if only to take a look at a few spreads from the book. Fine landscape work from a couple of contemporary practitioners. Good stuff.
*Both are from and/or currently based in the Midwest, specifically central Illinois, where I spent several years, and I believe most of the photographs for Still Feel Gone were made near there.
