Watch an excerpt of Eirik Johnson’s talk last May on his new book Sawdust Mountain at Aperture Gallery. In this clip, Johnson answers the questions from the audience on his technique, portraiture and the spirit of the project as well as on environmental issues. Johnson explains how he wanted to both tell the story of his region in Sawdust Mountain but to also leave an open interpretation to the viewer.

Sawdust Mountain is a culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. A Seattle native, Johnson focuses in this book on the tenuous relationship between industries such as timber and salmon, reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Johnson reveals a landscape imbued with an uncertain future—no longer the region of boomtowns built upon the riches of massive old growth forests, at a turning point to protect its natural resources extensively exploited over the last century. Through a poetic approach, Sawdust Mountain records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, aspects of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.

Johnson also discussed his previous photography projects that lead to Sawdust Mountain and read a poem by David Guterson included in the book, while going through his images. You can watch the talk in its entirety, divided in three different clips, on our vimeo account.