Jim Barker, Artisans of the New England (PORTRAIT 2023)
Artisans of the New England is a personal project which aims to provide a snapshot in time of the incredible bounty of talent found in the New England. My wife and I moved to Glen Innes just over a year ago and were blown away by the sheer volume of creative artists and artisans practicing their trade here, and as a fan of both portrait and documentary photography I wanted to make sure this was collected for posterity while also creating something we could use to promote the area and attract like-minded folk to move here. I'm probably about 15% of the way through it already - with every new subject I meet, I'm introduced to two more, so the scope keeps growing (champagne problem) but I'll keep shooting until I reach at least 100 artists. It's been truly awesome to meet so many fantastically skilled people joined by the common thread of just wanting to create stuff - I don't think any one of them could stop creating even if they wanted to - and enquire/interrogate them about their process. It's been quite self-affirming, as a newly minted creative myself, to meet folk who've been making and creating and tinkering for years and learning that, once you turn the tap of artistry on, you can't turn it off again, only direct the flow in new directions. I want this project to open people's eyes not only to the depth and breadth of creativity in the New England, but to make them think about picking up a camera, a brush, a hammer, whatever, and give it a go themselves: We've all got it within us, it's just a matter of finding and feeding that spark.
Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.