Meet Photographer Andrew Borowiec

I've just spent a bracing hour in the company of Andrew Borowiec, thanks to Stan Banos's Reciprocity Failure blog. Starting with this short introductory video:

...and moving on to this longer but even more rewarding slideshow. (There's been such relentless rosy-hued propaganda through TV advertising about how lovely and perfect the Gulf Coast is that I've been in need of a corrective.)

We're not quite there with the medium of the narrated online slideshow yet, but I think it's a particularly amenable way to look at photographs—a modern multimedia version of a book that pairs pictures with accompanying text, my favorite form.

Hope you can take the time. Andrew has four books under his belt, two of which are still in print: Along the Ohio (Creating the North American Landscape), Cleveland: The Flats, the Mill, and the Hills, Historic Architecture in Canton, 1805–1940, and Industrial Perspective: Photographs of the Gulf Coast. His website is here and his gallery is here.

Mike
(Thanks to Stan Banos)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Doug Howk: "Great video. Interesting that he too finds the panorama image best format for his Gulf Coast series (I use a 7x17 for much of my Florida work). I have his Cleveland book which is an excellent survey of Cleveland's industrial area. As a teenager I vividly remember accompanying my father through that area as he went from one side of town to the other while conducting his TV repair business at people's homes (a profession in the past). There was even a whale processing plant in the flats that stunk to the high heavens but was a crucial part of the perfume industry."

Dave: "I lived in the Akron area when I was first getting into photography. At the time I was only into taking pictures of waterfalls and sunsets. Northern Ohio seemed like a photographic wasteland to me. Now that I'm into photos of old buildings, I kick myself for the missed opportunity. Because I was looking for ruins to take photos of, I didn't really notice that part of Ohio. The place seamed downright prosperous to me. Yes, there were abandoned factories and run down neighborhoods, but there were also many new subdivisions and budding high tech industries.

"Borowiec's photos look great; they are right up my alley—ruins porn disguised as Joel Sternfeld or Stephen Shore (I mean that as a compliment). However, if he wants to be a proper documentarian, I think he needs to point the camera at some of the progress that's springing up in the rust belt."

Comments

[Doug Reilly]

I agree with your comment on the maturing of the narrated slideshow form. I do Digital Storytelling workshops at college campuses around the country; over one or two days everyone makes a short "film" out of still images and a spoken narrative. Sometimes a little clip of video, sometimes music, but the heart of it is photography and spoken word. It's a wonderful, powerful storytelling form. Magnum in Motion has done some great work with it, really bringing to life the photographers and their work.

[Henry Rogers]

Mike, What an interesting film! From the UK point of view it underlines an interesting contrast between our two countries. So many places in Britain have lost the industry on which they depended but people have stayed on hoping for better times. Would it be fair to say that Americans don't hang around but go looking for a better future elsewhere?

[John Krumm]

I enjoyed that very much, thank you. If folks have a Roku (or perhaps some other streaming device for your tv) you can add the Vimeo channel and watch both videos fullscreen in HD. They look quite good, though you might have to adjust the image ratio to stop it from cropping the sides.

[Ken James]

Thanks for this. I grew up in inner city Cleveland, what is now called Ohio City, and have only been back once, in 2001, since I left,. I was appalled at the decline, and all the totally cleared and boarded up areas. I will get his books. Must watch the video again, see if I recognize any areas.

[Harrison Cronbi]

"[A] modern multimedia version of a book that pairs pictures with accompanying text, my favorite form." - now...I'm imagining the possibility for an app, here. A photo book audio guide, if you will. Or a photo book director's (photographer's) commentary. I agree that accompanying text can often complement an image wonderfully. And one of my favourite web video finds of recent years was an extract from the 'Contacts' video series where photographers - William Klein, in this case - talk over their contact sheets. Now imagine if that accompanying audio could be partnered with a wonderfully printed Steidl instead of a platry Vimeo? Add in a jazz soundtrack and a glass of Aberlour...bliss.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Thank you for highlighting Andrew's work, Mike. As I looked through image sets on his site his style struck me as rather a combo of Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld with smatterings of Mitch Epstein for grunge seasoning.

Andrew does a very competent job of the post-apocalyptic rust-belt genre. His midday, slightly over-exposed visual style (in color), which he carries consistently, is effective for the type of sterile human-less exposition he's presenting.

No slight to Andrew's work but I think I'm just tiring of this genre. It seems depressingly pervasive, ever-wagging a sermonizing finger imploring viewers to feel guilt and sorrow for decaying consequences of social and economic changes. Was the world of these scenes' heydays really a "more honest time", as Andrew asserts in the video? Certainly not, quite the contrary.

So I salute Andrew for making good work from the leftovers of a party that was over even before he arrived 30 years ago. But my appetite for urban decay presented wistfully has been long over-sated.

[Brian Thomas]

Hearing Borowiec talk about a landscape 'as almost totally conceived first on paper by man' as a "great work of human imagination" while we looked at his superb pictures of fairly bleak industrial landscapes had a great effect here. For me digital photography is trying to use the full power of the computer to communicate rather than just using it to make our prints in Lightroom rather than in a darkroom.

My most recent photo film overlays revealing photographs of Turkish bazaars with comments about the online camera buying habits on display in the dpreview camera forums.

http://www.pileofprints.com/Films/Buying/

[Richard Ripley]

Good stuff!

I went to college in Ohio in the 70's and visited again about a year ago. The transformation of the industrial towns during that time is quite poignant.

I sense influences of Charles Sheeler crossed with Walker Evans as well as new American landscape.

Any idea what camera Andrew is using? Looks like a rangefinder from the way the work looks and from what I could see of his camera in the movie.

[Eric Rose]

Stan Banos has a keen eye for engaging photographic art. I'm glad you picked up on one of his blog postings. His blog is one of two (guess who the other one is) That I always start my day with. Now if Stan could only take a photograph with a level horizon (inside joke).

[Rod S.]

Wow, Mike, I enjoyed that so much. The short video is a great taster for what follows. Andrew articulated his feelings very well and the video allows us to share his delight in the small humourous details he observes. And his Industrial Perspectives gallery is georgeous. There's those spherical tanks from the front cover of my childhood copy of The How and Why Wonder Book of Chemistry. I'll enjoy coming back here to look around at everything. Thank you.

[Ned]

After just seeing Richard's Misrach exhibition of cancer alley over at Stanford University, this really helps tie it all together.

[Don Bryant]

+1 on Ken Tanaka's comment.

[Stan B.]

Richard R.- He describes the equipment for his various projects in the interview.

Ken and Dave- Think you'll find this quote of interest (also in the Borowiec interview):

"I have nothing but contempt for the legions of “ruin porn” photographers, those guys who parachute into our Rust Belt towns to make melodramatic pictures of the most obvious decay, then retreat to the safety of their studios to bloviate about the metaphorical meaning of their oeuvre. For all the dilapidation that you can see in my pictures, what I am really looking for is some manifestation of the human spirit that gives comfort, a glimmer of beauty, a hint of humor, a sign of hope."

[Richard Ripley]

I decided to go to the "horses mouth" to get an answer to my previous question about what camera Andrew uses. I wrote him an email and he replied within 30 minutes. Anyway, here's what he had to say,

"Yes, I've been using rangefinder cameras since 1977, starting with a Leica M2. In 1980 or so I began using a Fuji 6x9cm camera, which I used for almost three decades and still use for black and white work. However, in 2009 I began using a digital Leica for color work, first an M8 and, a few months later, an M9."

[Robert Roaldi]

What a pleasure it was watching that.

[Robert Roaldi]

Just wanted to add one more thought. A couple of earlier commenters expressed "fatigue" (if that's the right word to describe it) with the urban decay genre. I can understand that sentiment, sort of. If you walk through 10 museums full of examples of it, you stop being receptive, and I'm sure it would happen to me too. But I am much more tired of the actual urban decay. We should stop doing it, and I like it that people point it out.

[Michael Da Re]

I've been photographing in the Canton/Massillon area for years and found it interesting that in some of Mr. Borowiecs' shots the buildings have not changed for decades. The pawn shop looks the same as it did in the early 70's when I was in high school and the same goes for the the T.V. shop. I like the video,but urban decay? Even though some photos portray it clearly I'm sure there are much better examples...