DamnPhotoArtist-Commune

Tornado Plate #93

7/3/2019

Take a look at the path of the May 22 tornado through Jefferson City, Missouri and two rather prominent institutions stand out: Capital Region Medical Center and Jefferson City High School. Between them are roughly three blocks, bounded by Madison Street on one side and Jackson Street on the other, with Oak and Adams streets running parallel between them. The tornado did not touch the hospital and did only minor damage to the high school’s athletic field press box.

It whacked the homes in between with eye-of-the-needle precision.

The thing that has always fascinated me about this neighborhood is that running up the middle of these predominately lower-middle class homes are, on Adams Street, a string of gorgeous, stately houses that could have been plucked from St. Louis’ Forest Park; truly stunning early-20th Century gems clearly built for the city’s upper crust. They got whacked too. Perhaps not as badly as many of the smaller, more fragile homes, some of which were rendered total ruins, but they got whacked, nonetheless. This English Tutor style has always been a favorite of mine. There is a color version of this photograph that looks like a post card – blue sky with puffy clouds and perfect lighting all in a soft, gentle focus. It’s just that the roof has been torn up and the bay window ripped off, and probably other things I’m not aware of.

Every city has those neighborhoods developed decades, even a century before, that seem to defy expectations. How did it come to be this way? How did it get here? What was the idea behind this? What happened? I wish I knew more about this neighborhood – how it came to be, who lived here, and why its economics ran askew. But I don’t. And, clearly, nature didn’t care one way or the other. Rich or poor irrelevant.

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NOTE: Fifteen of these works depicting Jefferson City, Missouri’s May 22 tornado damage have been compiled into an artbook, which may be viewed and purchased at Capital Arts in Jefferson City, or purchased on this website in either 10-inch paperback or signed 12-inch hardcover.

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Curtis Hendricks

All my life I have had to learn to do things differently. To see the world differently.

Art attracted me from the beginning. Almost every home in the tiny farming village where I grew up had DaVinci’s ‘Last Supper’ on the wall. I would come across modern abstract art in magazines and be absolutely fascinated by the colors and techniques.

But there were no artists in my village. No one understood what modern art was. Or why it was. But there was an appreciation for photography.

I began shooting with a 1960 model Agfa rangefinder fixed-lens 35mm camera and learned to use darkroom techniques to finish my work. Graduating to a single lens reflex camera I worked primarily with Kodachrome. Digital photography opened a new world. The computer became the artboard I never had; the darkroom I could never afford. I discovered there would never be a camera or a lens that could capture what I saw in my head – that, I had to learn to create on my own.

I use the photograph the same way a painter uses a charcoal sketch – as a starting place. I squeeze out the unseen hiding between the pixels; the angels, the demons of my own imagination.

Light. Color. Darkness. Perspective. Introversion. Mystery. Love.

DamnPhotoArtist

Tornado Plate #93

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Curtis Hendricks

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