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Adam Welch
Just a human who traded their house for a life on the road. I'm a photomaker specializing in ultra large format, large format, and medium format film photography with an emphasis on historical/alternative printing techniques. Currently nomadic in the United States writing poetry and making pictures with my dog Leia.
Pie Town, yes, that's really the name. It is nothing more than a map dot in central New Mexico, United States. It's famous for...you guessed it...PIE. Aside from three small cafes, the majority of the town is nothing more than a cluster of run-down and dilapidated buildings. Each building decaying structure serving as a ruined reminder of the thriving community Pie Town once was decades ago.
While I did photograph in Pie Town itself, it was the landscape surrounding the small free campground the town operates (where I stayed for over a week) which drew my attention most.
The entire area was a glorious gift of shifting light. It was mid-March, and the grass was still golden and dry, and the air smelled sweet with sage. Branches from the Juniper and Pinyon Pines hung low, casting shadows that seemed to mingle carelessly through the wind-swept grasses. It was these beautifully gnarled trees which would prove themselves the most expressive of subjects.
Each fine evening I would take a stroll with the Hasselblad 500 C/M, usually with that dementedly beautiful 80mm F/2.8 Zeiss Planar, and see where the light might take me. I photographed with differing film stocks including Kodak Portra 160 and Ektar 100, as well as Ilford HP5 Plus and FP4 Plus. It was that last stock, perhaps my favorite black and white film to use in the Hasselblad, which captured the essence of the place most fully.
Although the photographs lack those gorgeous golden hour hues, the subtle contrasts brought on by FP4's 125 ISO lends a quiet stillness that I feel transcends any potential benefit a chromatic injection could offer.
Technical Information
- Camera: Hasselblad 500 C/M (named Alice)
- Lenses: Zeiss 80mm F/2.8 C Planar and Zeiss 150mm F/4 Sonnar CF
- Processing: Developed on-site with my "FP4 Poison" Caffenol variation
- Scan: Epson V700
