fuck yeah nj!

Pine Barrens Photography Exhibit

SOUTHAMPTON — For photographer Chase Schiefer, the essence of New Jersey isn’t found in malls and diners but in the vast region known as the Pine Barrens.

The over one million-cre tract is the subject of the Schiefer’s first exhibit, “The Lure of the Land.” The show is running through April at Bishop Farmstead, the headquarters for the Pinelands Preservation Alliance (PPA), in Southampton.

During the opening reception Sunday, which included a musical performance by the Piney Hollow Drifters, visitors pored over 15 images showcasing the area’s lush greenery and rustic structures.

“It makes me feel closer to Earth,” said Ed Monks of Little Egg Harbor Township, Ocean County, said of the exhibit.

The area’s thriving cranberry industry was highlighted in many. Rachel Rear was struck by the photograph titled “Sanguine Buoyancy,” an image of a small boat a sea of cranberries during harvest season in Double Trouble State Park in Ocean County.

“The title added more mystery,” said Rear, of New York City.

Before he pointed his camera toward the Pine Barrens, the 25-year-old Shiefer’s early inspiration came from the varying terrains of the United States, which he explored during family vacations around the country to places Maine, Florida, Texas and Arizona. His early photography endeavors mimicked his mother’s practice of taking pictures of the rich landscapes, he said.

He traces his Pine Barrens obsession to a birding expedition he took with his father at age 10. The two had traveled to Dividing Creek, Cumberland County.
In his artist’s statement, Schiefer describes a sensory experience of “powerful and sticky odor of damp pine,” thick forests of “mystifying shapes” and “immense squalls of neotropical birdsong.”

“We got there at dawn and there were birds everywhere. The smells of it, the sounds of it, the remoteness — it’s just fantastic,” said Schiefer, a resident of Brooklawn, Camden County.

His fascination is understandable. The South Jersey mainstay is home to portions of seven counties, 22 percent of  the state’s total land area, and if you believe folklore, the Jersey Devil.

The sturdy forests have endured threats in the form of fires — including a 1963 inferno that consumed 190,000 acres of Pinelands, 185 homes and seven people — and urban sprawl rapidly unfurling from Philadelphia, Atlantic City and New York City in the last century. Its role as a New Jersey institution was cemented legally and environmentally with its formal designation as the Pinelands National Reserve under the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 and the subsequent establishment of a comprehensive plan to preserve,  protect and enhance its natural and cultural resources, according to its website, nps.gov/pine. The area even made its mark on the pop culture scene as a setting for an episode of the HBO mob hit, “The Sopranos.”

Schiefer’s favorite photograph is titled “Wharton Crumbles,” an image containing a collapsed wooden structure and concrete remains of a barn juxtaposed with of a cheerful blue sky with fluffy clouds in the background.
The image, like most of Schiefer’s work, was created with HDR, or High Dynamic Range, photography, a process that enables the artist to capture a greater span of light.

“I like the composition, processing and the detail,” said Schiefer.

Most of the exhibits Bishop Farmstead has hosted for the past four years have focused on the Pinelands or the Jersey shore, said Mike Hunninghake, director of Education & Communications for the PPA.

“We try to highlight the natural and cultural landscape of (the area), said Hunninghake.

The exhibit is running through April at Bishop Farmstead, 17 Pemberton Road, Southampton. A portion of the proceeds of from the sale of the photographs will fund the PPA’s education programs. For information, contact the PPA at 609-859-8860.

Schiefer’s prints range in price from $20 to $125 and can be purchased by contacting him at bachmans.ivory@gmail.com. View his work www.flickr.com/people/bachmansivory.