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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
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Image by Michael Eastman
When Michael Eastman began shooting photographs, in 1972, one of his first subjects was Forest Park. “I was photographing people fishing, photographing that little waterfall, photographing trees… I was learning,” he says. In the ’80s, he shot and developed images of Forest Park every day, racing to produce work to share with his mentor, art historian Pete Steefel, during the last few months of Steefel’s life. “At the end, I had this pile of prints,” he says, “and I had a park that I loved that was really in neglect.”
Forest Park Forever was in its infancy but backed Eastman as he sold prints to fund the publication of the 1992 book The Forgotten Forest, a dazzling but melancholic black-and-white tour of the park. Prefaced with a lyrical essay by renowned writer William H. Gass, the book reminded people of the park’s beauty; even the crumbling World’s Fair wall and overgrown trees of heaven are lovely when seen through Eastman’s lens.
Twenty-five years later, Forest Park is a radically different place: The crumbly structures are gone, the trash trees replaced with native prairie plants. Eastman wanted to create a body of work that would both celebrate the park and provide a small stream of income to prevent it from sliding back into the neglect he’d documented decades ago. The images on these pages are the result; they are Eastman’s contribution to “Forever: The Campaign for Forest Park’s Future,” Forest Park Forever’s $130 million dollar quest, which launched October 2.
“I wanted to develop a kind of print that was new, my own, and a completely different take on the park,” he says. He created what he calls “a metaphorical lens,” made from pieces of antique art glass picked up at curio shops or yard sales. “Sometimes I’d put it in front of the camera; sometimes it’s behind. It’s not a process—it’s a technique. It’s involved. But I loved the results. I loved that it was impressionistic. I call it impressionistic camera, because it is a photograph, but it’s also really informed by Impressionist paintings. It reads like that. As you step back, your impressions change—but it’s all done with the camera.”
Unlike the photos in The Forgotten Forest, these prints are all in full, joyous color. They feel celebratory, sometimes even waggish. “They aren’t about the sky, the way the book was,” Eastman says. “It’s more about sculpture and texture and color and surface.”
Part of that footloose feel also comes from the fact that Eastman worked very simply, walking the park on foot with a 35mm digital camera. “I was free from the rigidity of shooting with a tripod,” he says. “For the first time since I started shooting photographs in the park in 1972, I was free… They’re not so formal. That’s what I’m known for, that formal approach to photography. These were very spontaneous and less controlled—more immediate.”
One of his favorite places to shoot is Kennedy Forest. “It’s astounding,” he says. “You’re in the middle of the city, near a major highway and a major road, Skinker, and it’s so quiet down there. You don’t hear anything but the birds”—including Charles and Sarah, the park’s famous great horned owls, with whom Eastman crossed paths while shooting. “They were hooting to one another one night,” he says, “so I started hooting at them.” (They rubbernecked, an impressive sight, considering the near-360 swivel of an owl’s neck.)
Eastman says that when he first sent these images to a trusted colleague in the art world, “she said, ‘Are these photographs of paintings or paintings of photographs?’ I said, ‘They’re both,’ but she couldn’t figure it out”—which, he says, is the right response: Art is supposed to happily scramble our perceptions a bit. But he’s also pleased with the prints’ accessibility, which is why he wants to print them as posters. “That’s better,” he says. “It’s more democratic. And they can be big and beautiful, just like a print. It’s essentially the same thing,” he laughs. “It’s ink on a surface!”
For more information on Eastman’s posters and prints, contact Forest Park Forever at 314-367-7275, or visit theforevercampaign.org/eastman.
