John Eide

While an undergraduate, I dropped out of college for a while. I did a road trip where saw things that I wanted to keep. I saw chain gangs as I drove through Georgia. I saw weirdly interesting roadside buildings in Florida. As soon as I returned to college I purchased a camera and fell madly in love with the process of making photographs. I think most photographers start as collectors. I certainly did.

In the late 1960s I was in grad school at the University of Minnesota, working toward an MFA in Film and Photography. I had three amazing mentors in Jerry Liebling, Elaine Mayes and Allen Downs.

These images reflect, to a degree, the work I was doing in graduate school. I picked up a 4x5 view camera and most of my work was with that large format process. I lived in the Cedar Riverside area near the West Bank on the edge of the University of Minnesota Campus. It was a fascinating place to live, at that particular time, because it was a period of transition from an old Scandinavian neighborhood to a neighborhood of students and hippies. I photographed the marks and artifacts people were leaving on their environment.

While my early photographs were rather formal, toward the end of grad school I began loosening up my process. I switched from a long focal length lens to a short focal length lens. I kept it locked at the hyperfocal distance and always stopped it all the way down. I kept the tripod legs set at eye level so I could photograph very quickly by putting a camera down, framing, sticking in a sheet of film, tripping the shutter. I worked as rapidly as I could with that large format camera.

Near the end of my graduate work, I was loaned a Leica for a weekend. Running two rolls of film through that camera changed my approach to photography. I fell in love. Again. 

I Immediately purchased a Leica M2 with a 35 mm lens which profoundly change the way I saw the world and the way I worked. I began to work more quickly and spontaneously.