I met Dave Anderson at FotoFest Houston in 2004. Ellen and I made some passing comment at breakfast about wishing we could be a fly on the wall during portfolio reviews and even though there were none scheduled that day, our friend Maria Sicardi told us to wait just a moment and she'd see what she could do. To our horror she had set us up in a ballroom to review portfolios for emerging photographers who just wanted to show their work--even to folks who had no idea at all how to review a portfolio. We saw some great work that day and made a life long friend in Dave. We have followed and collected his work and his spectacular book projects. We bought a wonderful print called Breeze that ended up on the cover of Rough Beauty.
Dave hails from Little Rock Arkansas and when we visited him there a few years ago we told him about our residency and we planted a seed. The seed bore fruit in April of this year. Dave goes deep into his projects. He lives in and among the people he photographs and videos. I asked him what he wanted to do here and I confess I am still not sure I understand it. He sent us this:
“In the Water”
Dave Anderson
During my time at Cassilhaus, I will be working on developing a repeatable and location-agnostic project tentatively entitled, “In the Water.” The project, as currently envisioned, involves three parts: 1) The creation of a research-driven “Observation Document” that is meant to capture the reality of a city’s history, character and socioeconomic reality; followed by 2) a large-scale, multi-artist-driven “Rumination” on the findings in the Observation Document; and realized with 3) a city-wide public exhibition and reflection on what the Observation & Rumination stages reflect about the city.
My principal goal during this time in North Carolina is less-focused on creating art and more so on how to develop a realistic and scalable framework for launching such an endeavor. Durham would certainly be an apt location for such a project, but it is not a requirement of my time there.
During his time here we connected him with community leaders, urban planners, and academics and I think he has made a small dent in the project. He also gave a wonderful talk about his work.
Turns out Dave is doing a lot more video work than still photography these days. He pitched a monthly video series about unique southern stories called SoLost to the Oxford American Magazine and 4 years and over 40 episodes later he is still going strong. Spend a little time with some of these amazing vignettes. He even did one about Ellen and me and Cassilhaus. We hope to get Dave back here so there will be another chapter to our story.
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