Rangefinder Magazine
June 2005

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Profile: Jerry Burchfield by Larry Brownstein
Primal Images

One often hears the question posed: “Is a photographer an artist, a craftsman, a journalist or a businessman?” In the case of Jerry Burchfield, the answer is all of the above, as well as social activist and teacher. He is a professor in the Photography Department and director of the photography gallery at Cypress College in Southern California.

Ficus maxima, 2002	Chinense do cheiro, 2002 (Fish Eye Peppers)

Burchfield began in the late 1960s as a commercial photographer working for small mom and pop wedding studios, then large wedding studios, doing advertising work too. In 1973, he opened BC Space in Laguna Beach, CA, with his partner, Mark Chamberlain. Before long, both he and Mark realized they were more interested in their personal work than commercial photography. Their studio space turned into an informal gallery displaying their work. Soon they became bored looking at just their own work and invited friends to display work. Eventually, they formalized the arrangement and began to operate as galleries do. Seeing the need for specialty printing of their own work and that of other artists, they began to offer custom Cibachrome prints (which were new at the time—now they are called Ilfochrome) and other specialty lab services.

Burchfield’s father had worked as a graphic artist. There were times when his father felt the frustration of focusing his talents on implementing other people’s visions, rather than his own—a choice he had made in order to support the family. Burchfield knew this was a path he didn’t want to follow. Burchfield found that, unlike his commercial photography work, the printing was not mentally draining and allowed him to continue focusing on his personal work.

Burchfield recalls seeing an early issue of Rangefinder magazine profiling the work of Harry Callahan. Upon reading that Callahan photographed for himself, not for clients, and upon seeing Callahan’s simple, yet elegant photography, Burchfield felt as if a door was flung open for him, reaffirming his decision to follow his own personal direction rather than just making pictures for money.

He went to California State University, Fullerton, where he obtained an M.F.A. degree and began to teach. Through the university system he met and was greatly influenced by fine art photographers Darryl Curran (who started the photography department at CSU Fullerton) and Robert Heineken from UCLA.

Untitled #2, 2002 (cover image for Primal Images)	Bertholettia excelsa, 2000 (Brazil Nut Leaves)	Campylocentrum fasciola, 2002 (Orchid)

In 1980 Burchfield and Chamberlain photographed the entire nine-mile length of both sides of Laguna Canyon Road from the 5 freeway off-ramp to the ocean, producing a 3 1/2-inch by 267-foot-long color photograph in both daylight and nightlight. This was repeated in 1990 and 2000. They will do this once again in 2010. To date they have done 14 different projects in Laguna Canyon, including color photograms of all the roadside trash, and documenting light painting of the entire length of the canyon with overlapping red, blue and green lights. Burchfield says his art is about change. The Laguna Canyon Project, he says, helps people see how they have changed the environment. The goal isn’t necessarily to prevent change as much as to increase awareness and encourage people to think about what kind of change they want.

In 1989, in response to plans to develop a large wilderness area, Burchfield and Chamberlain spearheaded an effort to build a 600-foot-long mural, called “The Tell.” The mural was a gigantic photo-collage made with over 100,000 family snapshots to form a narrative about the evolution of mankind. The project culminated with over 7000 people marching to the mural as the focus of a protest, and it resulted in the developer selling the property, which remains a wilderness park to this day.

In 1998 Burchfield joined a friend on a trip to the Amazon. He knew he could get beautiful conventional images of the Amazonian plants, but he felt he wanted to do more. He had often experimented with alternative processes, especially cameraless photography. The term photogram is sometimes used to describe cameraless photographs chemically developed in a darkroom. Burchfield calls his Amazon prints “lumen prints” to draw attention to the fact they are produced on-site in daylight from direct exposure to the light over extensive periods of time. They are not chemically developed. Burchfield chose this unusual way to document the Amazon flora because he likes the physical interaction with nature and, more importantly, because the prints would be fossil-like and thus hint at the potential loss of these native plants. Burchfield says the Amazon’s flora remains primarily native whereas in Hawaii, for example, only about 32 percent of the species are native.

Left: , Middle: Aciotis aequatorialis, 2002, Right: Manihot esculenta, 2002, Below: Burchfield and assistant Diane Edwards document lumen prints as they are exposed to sunlight on the upper deck in what Burchfield calls his “outdoor studio/darkroom.” (Photograph courtesy of Jerry Brisson.)

Cassia rubriflora, 2002	Aciotis aequatorialis, 2002	Manihot esculenta, 2002

The work that culminated in his book, Primal Images: 100 Lumen Prints of Amazonia Flora, was done over the course of three trips to the Amazon. Burchfield brought a supply of different black-and-white photo papers, and with the help of a guide he found interesting specimens to bring back to his boat. The boat became his outdoor studio. On the bow of the boat the specimens would be placed on the black-and-white paper, taped down, and left there as long as 10 hours. The black-and-white paper, exposed to the direct sun without conventional developing chemistry, would, strangely, begin to “develop” colors.

Burchfield refers to conventional chemical developers as “accelerants.” Instead, direct sunlight developed the paper, much as was done in early photographic processes. Burchfield did use fixer and a wash to ensure stability of the finished prints.

	Burchfield and assistant Diane Edwards document lumen prints as they are exposed to sunlight on the upper deck in what Burchfield calls his “outdoor studio/darkroom.” (Photograph courtesy of Jerry Brisson.)

“I worked 12 hours a day. I brought 25 different types of paper. I found that old paper, such as an old batch of Ilford Multigrade or Kodabromide—stuff that’s been sitting in my attic for years, that you would never use for normal printing—would give me a different result than a new package of the same product. I used old paper, new paper, resin-coated, fiber-based, everything available because they all have unique characteristics.”

Though he uses black-and-white enlarging paper, the prints often produce interesting colors. During his experiments, he learned that often the older papers produced the more colorful results. Besides the choice of paper, he has learned that the quality of light and moisture, whether atmospheric or from the subject, also has a strong influence on the color.

The floating studio resulted in diffused images because the sun would expose the paper from many angles during the long exposure as the boat was moving. Burchfield explained that a short exposure might result in a silhouette, but a long stationary exposure created modeling by letting the sun “wrap around” the subject. The boat was seldom stationary, and the sun was moving during exposures as long as 10 hours. These long exposures sometimes obliterated the shape of the plant leaving abstract white areas on the print where the specimen was touching the paper. Early on, Burchfield realized the specimens would need to be taped down to prevent them from being blown away during the exposure. Interestingly, the tape becomes a frame in the print.

“I was at the mercy of nature making these prints,” Burchfield says. “A lot of them didn’t come out. Many of the plant cuttings wilted and withered in the heat before I could use them.”

For Aciotis aequatorialis (page 12) Burchfield explains, “I used Pal paper (an old paper), giving it a blue color. This plant, commonly called a Water Hyacinth, had a lot of moisture, which caused it to stick to the paper. When I pulled it off, little bits of emulsion came off with it.”

He sold the print to a collector and received a frantic call from a framer who had been trying to get the white spots off until Burchfield explained there was no need to.

Though the prints are metaphorical in nature, Burchfield wanted the project to also have a documentary dimension to it. He took conventional photos of every plant so botanists could identify them and Burchfield could include the scientific name of the plant in the book. There were, however, several cases where it was impossible to distinguish the exact species of a plant, and no name is provided.

Over the course of three trips Burchfield produced 500 prints. He delivered about 200 of them to the publisher and 100 of them appear in his book Primal Images. The book, which has a foreword by Wade Davis and an introduction by Jonathan Green, is available through the University of Chicago Press (www.press.uchicago.edu) and Amazon.com (which only seems proper given the subject).

Burchfield reports there is a broad appeal for this work, and a gallery sold over 30 prints in a recent show. For print sales, in addition to his one-of-a-kind originals, he does an edition of five prints with dimensions of 50x35 inches, an edition of 10 at 30x25 and an edition of 25 at 17x14. With his expertise as a printer, you might expect Burchfield to make the gallery prints himself; however, he has taken advantage of digital printmaking. He comments, “After 30 years of doing my own printing and 14 years of doing custom and specialty printing for others while at BC Space, I have turned to others and different technology to print this work. Because of subtle tonality and detail I get with the lumen prints, I do high-end scans of the original prints and then have lightjet prints made on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper.

Even though the originals are made on black-and-white paper, I have to use color to reproduce them in editions. Digital laser printing gives me more subtlety than I could achieve through traditional optical enlarging, which is why I made the change. I miss doing the hands-on work myself, but I am after the best quality I can get and seek to make the editions as accurate and true to the originals as I can. Also, this method allows me to retain the same subtle qualities regardless the size, which would not be the case with traditional enlarging.”

What will this Renaissance man be up to next? Though he has only shown the Amazon prints he has been expanding the project to include Hawaii and Southern California. Also, he is busy documenting the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California, that was recently decommissioned. You can view that work at www.legacyphotoproject.com/. Whatever else he tackles it is sure to be done in a similarly unconventional and thought-provoking way.

Burchfield has an exhibition of his Primal Images work running June 23–August 30, 2005, at the Fahey/Klein Gallery. The exhibition opens with a public reception and book signing on Thursday, June 23, 7–9:00 p.m. The Fahey/Klein Gallery (www.faheykleingallery.com/) is located at 148 N. La Brea, Los Angeles, CA, 90038.

Additionally, he has an exhibit running June 12–16 at the Irvine Fine Arts Center featuring the work from the abandoned Marine Corps Air Station. A book called The Edge of Air (www.lagunawildernesspress.com) is being done in conjunction with the exhibit.

Jerry can be contacted at jburchfield@ cypresscollege.edu/.

Larry Brownstein is author and photographer of Los Angeles: Where Anything Is Possible, an inspirational look at life, culture and architecture in L.A. He is represented by Getty Images, California Stock and other photo agencies. His work includes travel, landscape, portraiture and wedding photography. He can be reached at (310) 815-1402, larryb@larrybrownstein.com, www.larrybrownstein.com/.