Bob Watt with Model, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1996
Bob Watt’s heart failed last week at age 86. His pursuit of beauty via his poetry and art became the subject of our decade long film and book project titled One Million Years is Three Seconds. Bob told us “A million years is like three seconds” to point to how infinitesimal our existences are in the grand scheme of things. He wrote us letters that read like poems ruminating on memories of his Manitowoc County childhood, the Milwaukee art world, the Packers, Badgers, and the models and people in his life.
Electrical Shock from Season's Gleamings, 2004
We did a book once, Season’s Gleamings, and a film, Foot Massage, about the optimism of the 1960s expressed through aluminum Christmas tree design and electrical devices, some made in our hometown of Manitowoc. CBS Sunday Morning and The New York Times covered it. Most Decembers to this day we get calls from writers to talk about the trees from publications like Der Spiegel in Hamburg or Third Coast Digest Milwaukee. The trip continues.
Amber & Brad in Their Garden, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2009, 40x32 archival inkjet print
Gardens have been a favored location. While photographing Amber and Brad in their urban garden a couple summers ago, Brad turned his video camera on us to show the apparatus of our process then posted it on YouTube.
Amber & Brad Cooking Ribs, Manitowoc, Wisconsin, 2004, 12x20 platinum-palladium print
We’ve been photographing Amber and Brad for 10 years in front of and in back of their various homes. Check out the 16mm film we made about the fire pit in their back yard on YouTube.
- Ryan A. (6.17.2010), 5.5×3.25 palladium postcard print
When we moved into our studio in 1989, Ryan was a kid playing in the side alley. Now he runs the Boarding House next door. He stood for a portrait the day Wisconsin Public Television documented us working on our Real Photo Postcard Survey Project. View the WPT segment here.