Corey Arnold

Today, the weather might be extreme (by mild Portland standards) but the tough conditions in these photos give some rare and valuable comparative scale to the world’s pressing economic and existential problems. It’s all the more poignant as the context comes through the extremely hazardous lens of extreme crab fishing. Sure, times are going get tougher in 2009 but if these fishermen are any indication, the human spirit is up to the challenge, surviving… simply out of habit.

Playful postmodern performance photography can show up anywhere, as is amply evidenced by commercial fisherman Corey Arnold’s color shots of hijinks on the high seas of the forbidding roiling Bering Straits. The romantic myths of the Great White North assiduously cultivated by such fabulists as Jack London get a big-time tweak when we contemplate scenes in which Arnold lies blissfully in the hold of his boat cuddling a bleeding dead fish that looks like it is about to kiss him on the lips; or when we see a shipmate from behind on the deck swinging an iron bar gamely at a piñata that he contrived as a birthday gift for himself, as monstrous waves swell around him, threatening to swamp the celebration. Even when nature fills the picture, Arnold goes overboard; in a stunningly beautiful image of chaotic motion, a dense flock of gulls flies and splashes every which way in compelling anarchy.

Images by Corey Arnold. He also maintains a blog of his life as a commercial fisherman. Introductory text by Jeff Jahn; additional text by Michael Weinstein.