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.

Rich in his Airstream, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, 2008, 12x20 gum over platinum-palladium print

The Milwaukee Art Museum sent Dan Ollman to make a 2-minute video about us making this photograph with our 12×20 banquet camera. A dark cloud blew in while we worked and Rich told his story. View the video here on YouTube.

Portrait Society Gallery booth installation at Next Fair, Chicago. Photo © Art Elkon 2011

The Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee took our Green Acres Trip prints to the Next Fair in Chicago in May 2011. View the images here.

Milwaukee Art Museum "Unmasked & Anonymous" installation view, November 2008. Photo © MAM 2008

“This was effective in a small dimly-lit gallery where Shimon and Lindemann’s tintypes whispered across the way to ta collection of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes with which they shared affinities. Depsite their age differences–or maybe because of it–the air crackled with the electricity of their meeting.”  — Sam Watson, Art Papers, January/February 2009

Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon  & Lindemann Consider Portraiture exhibition catalog still available here.