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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine Art Photo of barren wall set against a windy, overcast sky in St. Paul, MN. 1974.]()
Damming the Wind. St. Paul, MN. 1974.As with many photographs in the Hungry Winter series, this picture captures an empty urban landscape awaiting demolition. Beyond the melancholy subject, the aesthetic meaning of the image is found in the intangible presence of pure form, space, and light.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of façade cracked by the shadow of a leafless tree in San Francisco, CA. 1977]()
#394. 1977. San Francisco
A guarded and impenetrable façade cracked by the shadow of a leafless tree.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of a play of ghostlike shadows on a alley wall in San Francisco. 1977.]()
Ghost Dance. San Francisco, 1977.
In a back alley in San Francisco’s China Town, reflections and shadows slowly dance and play across a bare wall, much like Taiwan Ping shadow puppets. It also brought to mind all the lost souls, whether frenzied womenfolk in 19th century Greece or the Plains Indians of North America, who preferred to dance into oblivion rather than submit unwillingly to fate. The shadow’s forms resemble those of the mid 20th-century sculptor Jean-Hans Arp.
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![As Personal as It Gets. Minneapolis, MN. 1976.
As Personal as It Gets. Minneapolis, MN. 1976.
In a section of Minneapolis once known by some as Peacock Alley, named after an Afro-American bar that once stood on the site, i]()
As Personal as It Gets. Minneapolis, MN. 1976.
In a section of Minneapolis once known by some as Peacock Alley, named after an Afro-American bar that once stood on the site, is an exposed wall of a building awaiting demolition. The image captures an empty and barren urban landscape. However, there are traces of human activity caught in the shadows of the photographer’s camera and tripod aimed at a primal house-shaped silhouette at right. Because of the absence of human forms in most of my work, this image is as personal as I get.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of a Ford Gran Torino sedan shrouded in a canvas tarp in Minneapolis, MN. 1976.]()
Gran Torino. Minneapolis, MN. 1976.
An elegiac tribute to Ford’s splendid intermediate car of the 1960s and 1970s. A canvas shrouds a four-door Gran Torino sedan parked on an empty street. Here a human presence is evident in pride of ownership, the care of a prized possession under a protective canvas tarp. The drapery concealing most of the Gran Torino’s majestic form lends the image a funereal quality.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of a lone building surrounded by the emptiness of urban renewal, amid a sea of dirt. Minneapolis, MN. 1973
A lone survivor of urban renewal stands amid a sea of dirt.]()
Monolith Minneapolis, MN. 1973.
A lone survivor of urban renewal stands amid sea of barren earth. Years later, The first floor of this industrial warehouse would become a trendy bistro and wine bar, accessible by way of the docking area. I have no idea if the eatery still exists or if it went the way of the building’s original purpose.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of a left turn signal painted on an asphalt street in Minneapolis, MN. 1975.]()
Left Turn. Minneapolis. 1975.
The presence of dynamic form found in pavement markings. The left turn arrow is like a shark in a black sea abruptly turning toward the shore for prey.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph taken on a winter’s journey along a less traveled walkway in Minneapolis, MN. 1976]()
Winterreise, 1976
A winter’s journey along a walkway in Minneapolis.
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On the Grounds of the Prairie Moon Museum. 1976
A farmer, a sweat old fellow, spent his waning years creating a museum of local curiosities in rural, western Wisconsin.
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![George Bedell’s Hungry Winter Series. Fine art photograph of three drums containing agricultural chemicals in rural, central Minnesota. 1973.]()
Chemical Drums: The Law of Thirds. 1973.
Unlike most images from the Hungry Winter series, here is a clean, bright image shot in a rural area. Despite the drums’ content, industrial, agricultural chemicals that kill the soil and perhaps all of us one day, my intention was not to make a statement about our precariousness environment. Although aware of the ecological dangers of industrial farming, my primary concerns were the abstract visual proportions of the rule of thirds, and the scene’s innate emotionally sterility.
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Firestone. 1973
Vacant buildings await demolition in Minneapolis. -
Hungry Winter: A Testament of Youth
Van Gogh once wrote that whenever he saw unutterable loneliness, the end of things, God came to mind. I do not share Vincent’s religiosity, but agree that sights of emptiness and abandonment can evoke, if not God, at least awe.
These images were taken in the 1970s. They are witness to change and the destruction of memory, the old being swept away for the promise of a bright future. Within these images, I hope some divinity lingers. I was concerned with finding aesthetic insight in the simple scenes that caught my eye, and the sense of purpose that art gives life.
I was a young man when I took these pictures. Looking back, I have come to believe that when we are young, we are more concerned with the drama of approaching dissipation and eventual annihilation because most young people lunge into life and age in a seemingly endless, rapid series of sharp disruptions. The young are strong and, from a distance, can face down death. Growing older is a slower, more leisurely and nuanced process. It is barely perceivable, only occasionally glimpsed when suddenly looking into the eyes of a haggard stranger in a rearview mirror. And so, the Hungry Winter series has become for me a testament to youth.
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