Bailey Russel’s portfolio Energy and Extraction was selected for Special Recognition for the 2025 Denis Roussel Award.
Would you please tell us about yourself?
I live in Laramie, Wyoming in the USA and have taught photography here at the University of Wyoming for almost 15 years. Before that I lived in New York City where I received an MA in Photography from a program run by NYU and the International Center for Photography and worked for the Met, the MoMA, and as an assistant for various artists.
Who has had an influence on your creative process?
In undergrad I studied at Princeton University where my first photo teacher was Emmet Gowin, an man I can confidently say is the main reason I am a photographer now. Emmet is an inspirational teacher and gave me a deep love in the medium. Classes with him were frequently two hour long monologues to spellbound students where he showed us work from artists from all over the world and introduced us to the joys of darkroom printing.
Emmet’s body of work on nuclear test sites, and in particular “Sedan Crater with our Helicopter Shadow, Looking East, Area 10, Nevada Test Site, 1996”, was one of the most influential photographic pieces in my life and one of the first photographs I fell in love with. The combination of technical craft through printing and toning with these abstract, terrifying yet completely human landscapes has always stayed with me as a touchstone for my own work.
Please tell us about the work you submitted to Denis Roussel Award.
This piece I submitted is part of a project looking at energy production and extraction in the greater Wyoming area. I’m using cyanotype on glass as the medium with gold leaf backing it. The combination of the oval shape and the gilt backing for me evoke the preciousness of early cameo photographs, while treating windmills, jackpumps, and hydroelectric dams with that level of care creates a bit of dissonance in my mind. Living fifteen years in a state whose entire existence is grounded on extraction has driven home to me the complexity of the issue while the every day presences of these human built structures wherever I drive makes the need for change ever more crucial.
What tools have you found essential in the making of your work?
All the art I make tends to be process based where the method must have some relationship to the content. I spent a long time building room sized cameras before moving here and converting a trailer into a camera obscura as a teaching tool and a way to make large scale landscape photographs. The west has always meant mobility to me, so the idea of a camera on wheels seemed appropriate to my new home.
How do you work through times when nothing seems to work?
It’s interesting you ask about problems in my work. For the last four months now, my class printing process has not been working. I’ve only recently figured out a few of the problems, but it still isn’t where I want to it to be and the images are coming out a little damaged. To get through this time I’ve had to carefully go back through my entire process, from the chemicals I use to where I physically do the work, and try and figure out what factors have changed since it last worked. I can take the time to do this because I know that eventually I’ll get it working again, that eventually the images will come through, but in the meantime, yes, it’s been a very frustrating summer. I tend to work on multiple projects at the same time, so moving away from what’s frustrating me for a bit before coming back to it with fresh eyes has also always been a good strategy.
How does your art affect the way you see the world?
Since most of my work deals with land use and abuse, it has continually affected how I view the world around me. I’ve always been interested in functional architecture and the built structures that we use to exploit the land, looking at the beauty in them but also the history and impact they have. Pump jacks can be both beautiful and awful at the same time, windmills graceful and an eyesore. I want to know how these structures got there, what happened below the earth to create the oil we pump out, and why the wind blows across this particular part of our land. Photography is a wonderful tool to make the world around you more interesting. It’s a way for me to expand and satisfy my curiousity.
Thank you Bailey. To learn more about the work of Bailey Russel please click on his name.
