Photographer Ben Huff has been dreaming of his own press since 2007, and this summer, with the help of an $18,000 grant from the Rasmuson Foundation, he has finally begun to make that dream a reality.<\/p>\n
Ice Fog Press\u2019 name \u2014 and its first book \u2014 come from Fairbanks, where Huff lived and worked for many years, but the fellowship allowed him to open his own space is downtown Juneau. He hopes it will be a resource for the community, with services ranging from providing digital printing services to eventually holding small classes and local events.<\/p>\n
Ice fog, Huff explains, is an atmospheric condition unique to northern latitudes. It\u2019s a type of cold air combustion that traps a fine mist of ice crystals close to the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s dense and it\u2019s gross and it\u2019s insane \u2026 but it\u2019s also really beautiful,\u201d Huff said. \u201cThat collision of nature and mankind is kind of that sweet spot where photography lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huff has lived in Juneau for six years now but he knew there could be no other name for his press.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always had it in my head that that was what it was going to be for years I\u2019ve been thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juneau, he pointed out, is no stranger to ice or fog.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can kind of split those words apart if you don\u2019t know what ice fog is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Huff anticipates that the press will publish only a few books a year. He planned on starting with some of his own local work, as he said, \u201cI didn\u2019t feel comfortable asking anybody else to trust me with their work just yet,\u201d until he began looking for a photo of ice fog for his website.<\/p>\n
He remembered, years ago, seeing a scene of downtown Fairbanks with ice fog in a box of photos by Dennis Whitmer, someone he describes as \u201ca mentor of sorts and a very, very close friend. A really wonderful photographer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huff emailed asking if he could use the photo. To which Whitmer replied, \u201cI\u2019ll do you one better\u201d and sent back what he called, \u201cA book that I never made that I always intended to make.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was just a pdf, really rough as Huff describes it, with maybe 20 pictures.<\/p>\n
\u201cI opened it here in the computer and was like, \u2018well\u2026 that\u2019s the first book. Done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Huff had always intended to print Whitmer\u2019s work \u2014 but several years down the road and in hardcover.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was something that is smaller and it\u2019s quicker and it\u2019s something we can do in a little bit of a humbler nature. It won\u2019t be a big full-fledged hardcover book, it\u2019ll be a smaller affair,\u201d Huff said.<\/p>\n
But Huff isn\u2019t mourning the change of plans, even if it means shelving his own book until spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the whole thing feels more collaborative, which is what I wanted from the beginning,\u201d he said. So far, starting the press \u201cfeels exactly the way I envisioned it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The collection is tentatively titled \u201cFairbanks in Winter. Huff is trying to persuade Whitmer to choose a more lyrical name. Whitmer\u2019s previous book is called simply \u201cFront Street Kotzebue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huff was going over some \u201creally early\u201d proofs of the book, which will consist of 20\u201424 pictures, the day the Capital City Weekly visited. He said it\u2019ll be ready sometime in the fall. He is planning a run of 300-500 copies and the book will cost around $25. It will also be accompanied by a smaller run, 50-100 copies, of one of the prints.<\/p>\n
THE LAB<\/strong><\/p>\n Suite 100 of the Triangle building is not a big space, but it\u2019s big enough for \u201cThe Lab:\u201d Huff\u2019s library of photography books, a table, computer and work desk, and the giant printer that can print up to 44 inches by 100 feet.<\/p>\n This is Huff\u2019s digital printer which is available, for a price, to all of Juneau. He has printed family portraits on it but also is working on more ambitious projects, such as the pen-and-ink drawing by Abe Wylie that was displayed at The Canvas in July. Originally \u201cseven or eight feet wide, just this monster thing,\u201d The Lab is making editioned prints about five feet in length.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have that outsourced and do that somewhere else, something that big, would be a lot of money and you wouldn\u2019t know what you\u2019re getting until you unwrapped it,\u201d Huff said.<\/p>\n Digital printing is something Huff himself has been doing for a decade and has focused on, even taking a residency in Syracuse, New York in summer 2014 to build his skills.<\/p>\n As well as printing for others, he plans on teaching others to print \u2014 an idea for one of the many classes he plans on holding in the space starting this fall.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was teaching at the University (of Alaska Southeast), it was the steepest learning curve of anything we did. Trying to translate what you were seeing in the screen: this beautiful, backlit, luminescent thing onto paper. \u2026 it\u2019s a different language, the screen and paper, and it\u2019s that translation that is everything,\u201d Huff said, adding that it was a skill \u201cbuilt over making a lot of prints and making a lot of bad prints.\u201d<\/p>\n The classes will be small, one to two weeks long and held in the evenings starting this fall or next spring. They will be \u201cvery short concentrated classes,\u201d Huff said, each focusing on one subject like basic cameras, using Photoshop or prepping for print. More details will become available on his website, icefogpress.com.<\/p>\n He also hopes to eventually hold salons, gatherings where artists of different mediums \u2014 painters, printmakers and even poets \u2014 can come and share their work and engage creatively.<\/p>\n That\u2019s \u201cnot something I\u2019ve totally nailed down yet,\u201d Huff said.<\/p>\n In the meantime, Huff\u2019s library and Huff himself are available Wednesdays-Fridays 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and by appointment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A WORKING PHOTOGRAPHER<\/strong><\/p>\n Amidst all this, Huff is still working on his own projects. He received a grant earlier this year from the Alaska Humanities Forum to continue his work photographing the abandoned military town on Adak.<\/p>\n The base there was founded during World War II and was strategically important during the Cold War, housing up to 9,000 at one point. But the military moved out in 1997, leaving the town with only about 70 residents.<\/p>\n Images of prefab buildings abandoned in the snow, dwarfed by the overwhelming beauty of the islands, adorn The Lab\u2019s walls, along with photos of residents looking directly at the camera as if they have something to say to the viewer. (For more, visit huffphoto.com).<\/p>\n Huff estimates that he has several years\u2019 worth of work ahead of him before that series is ready to be transformed into a book. He makes his third trip to the Aleutians later this month.<\/p>\n He published \u201cThe Last Road North\u201d in 2014, a collection of his photos between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay. While shopping it around to publishers, he took a copy that he \u201cprinted and bound, beginning to end, entirely handmade\u201d to show them what he wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cBooks have always been a really important part of what I am up to,\u201d he explained. \u201cA really important part of my process, (to) my understanding of photography and my appreciation of photography. \u2026 A lot of what I love about photography is this bound object.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBooks sort of have this life to them, when you hold them close,\u201d Huff said. \u201cSitting in your favorite chair, at the library or wherever that is, and taking in this voice or this landscape \u2026 beginning to end.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly design wizard and staff writer Randi Spray at randi.spray@capweek.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photographer Ben Huff has been dreaming of his own press since 2007, and this summer, with the help of an $18,000 grant from the Rasmuson Foundation, he has finally begun to make that dream a reality. Ice Fog Press\u2019 name \u2014 and its first book \u2014 come from Fairbanks, where Huff lived and worked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":28607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-28606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28606"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=28606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}