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A Place to Call Home
Midwest Home, June-July 2005
© 2005 by Greg Breining
There were other things. The well-publicized falling out with biologist L. David Mech, with whom he had studied wolves in the Arctic, had left him feeling damaged and scrutinized. And the last two photo books of wolves, White Wolf and Brother Wolf, had exhausted him.
There was more and it struck to the heart of his identity. For 20 years, as a globe-trotting National Geographic photographer, he had traveled through Asia, Africa and the Arctic, shooting stories on bamboo, prairie, and wolves. And it was great. It had made his name. It had given him freedom and an outlet for his art. But the publishing world was changing, becoming stingier and more corporate. He was tired of the long weeks afield, up to half the year. He missed his family.
And something fundamental bothered him about his craft. Hop on a jet. Get the royal treatment. Burn 30 rolls of film a day. Fly home. It began to seem frenzied and shallow. A monkey could make great photos shooting 30 rolls a day. What had happened to studied contemplation of the land he loved?
That would be a spot of heaven he owned along Uncle Judd Creek, near Ely, bordering the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. That, too, he owed to National Geographic. He found the place on assignment in 1976 and six years later built a log house overlooking a 15-foot waterfall. After the wolf books, as his deep discontent gnawed at him, he was walking the woods near Judd Lake with a reporter for the Star Tribune, who asked, What's next?
What, indeed? Two things, really. His new home. And a new photographic journey, a "self assignment," that would lead him home.
The photographic project came to him from that inexplicable source of inspiration, an idea fully formed as if gift wrapped with a bow. He would photograph the elusive spirit of the country he loved, right outside his door. One season. One photo a day. One click of the shutter. No more. This would be his discipline and the reinvention of his photography.
In September 1994, he began. On the 23rd, tipping point to winter, the moment in the celestial orbit when day balanced night, he lugged his camera and tripod to the black spruce bog he had always found haunting, where he swore he heard the voices of the "little people" known to his ancestors. His shutter opened. It closed. The journey had started.
Some days the pressure of seeking a single image nearly drove him to tears. Often he despaired the decisions. On the 23rd day, he castigated himself for having passed up portraits of deer and even a playful otter. As light died, in desperation and without high hopes, he photographed a red leaf on a dark pond. Later the image became one of his favorites, because it taught him that delightful surprises come when hope is least and beauty is found in small details. That image alone revived him.
Because of his self-imposed discipline, Brandenburg couldn't even take photos of developing Ravenwood. He had made one mistake. He had just come home from shooting. The family was sitting around the table and Judy fussed with a self-timer to take a group portrait. Here, let me do it, Brandenburg volunteered, and without thinking, composed the shot and pushed the shutter. They all looked at one another as if to gasp.
Many of his friends, even photographers, thought the shot-a-day project was crazy. Didn't make sense. Who cares? Photography is burning film. Brandenburg resorted to metaphors to explain it. A "Zen-like" process. A "Japanese aesthetic."
Surprisingly, one fellow who thought it made great sense was Salmela. But that was David, impish and even childlike in his joy and creative verve. He got it.
Jim Brandenburg has watery blue eyes, and the fluid voice and calm manner of someone who can surprise a wolf or sneak within an arm's length of a ruffed grouse without its flying off.
"David healed me through that process of building something beautiful with pure joy and friendship and respect," he says. "It doesn't happen easily."
Ravenwood nestles among the trees while exuding a terrific presence. The roofline, where it is staggered, gives the impression of nesting structures. Where the roof is covered by sod, Ravenwood melts into the ridge, as a toppled spruce is consumed by moss.
Completed in 1996, Ravenwood extends from the original log house, which has now become the kitchen and a bedroom, down an angled hall with slate floor, cedar ceiling, and generous windows, through which Brandenburg has photographed wolves and even ghostlike lynx. Long cherry shelves run along one wall, with spare selections of Finnish glass birds and Inuit whalebone carvings.
The hall leads past a sitting area in front of an irregularly shaped rock fireplace, to the studio, a tall, narrow space with steeply pitched roof. "My first thought is I wanted it to be reminiscent of a Viking long hall," Brandenburg says.
It's a captivating space, not soaring vacuously, like yet another "great room," but layered into separate work areas. On the main level is a generous worktable and, around the perimeter, windows, cabinets, and shelves. An open steel and slate stairway leads to the second level—a loft with a workspace shaped like an elongate horseshoe. With a commanding view of the windows and room below, it gives the sense of working on the bridge of a ship. And on the third level, high in the rafters, is the contemplation loft, accessible only by pushing aside the shoji screens in the second-floor guest bedroom (with yukatas hanging behind the door and paper fan with rising sun on the night stand) and climbing a catwalk.
Filling the back wall, flanking a floor-to-ceiling window, are guitars and books. Brandenburg once strummed for money, even sharing stages with the Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry. He wasn't much of a student then, but "as you become older, books become more and more important." Suspended by a thin cable from the peak of the ceiling are two rocks. "When I'm alone here, this is my company," Brandenburg says, nudging the rocks so they swing slowly. "I've got a little ADD, and anything that's moving helps me think better."
Last year, Brandenburg published another day-by-day record called Looking for the Summer, though he allowed himself the luxury of shooting many exposures before editing the selection to a single photo per day. The books have allowed him a career independent of magazine travel. They have let him come home.
Brandenburg has scaled back his travel. With Judy and daughter Heidi Brandenburg-Ross he runs his galleries in Ely and Luvern to sell his art. Son Anthony has helped design and produce his books and set up his web site. Brandenburg is working on a special for Japanese television on the American prairie that will eventually show in the United States. And he is writing and editing his own photography for a book about wolves and humans.
The Brandenburgs have also donated a square mile of land in the vicinity of Ravenwood to The Trust for Public Land to permanently protect it. Near Luvern, near where Brandenburg grew up, the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation (with help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) has purchased more than 800 acres of grazed prairie for restoration and protection.
After talking most of the afternoon about his photography, the restorative power of artistic discipline, and a place called home, Brandenburg leads his visitors down the steep stairs to his sauna near Uncle Judd Creek. A balsam drops its load of snow on the woman, who lets out a shriek. Seconds later, her cry is answered by a deep howl that starts low and slowly builds, with a ragged note of annoyance. They all look at one another in astonishment.
There is a Norse myth of Brandenburg's ancestors that the wolves Skoll and Hati chase the light of the sun and moon, and when they catch and devour them, time will end.
Brandenburg cups his hands to his mouth, leans back, and issues a howl of his own. In a moment it is answered by the voice in the forest.