katie konrad

I’d been living in Boulder, CO for about 3 1/2 months at the time I took this roll.  It’s been hard adjusting to a new place, especially one in which I knew nobody for a time.  I took this roll in places that I like to go, or of things that I thought particularly describe this place.  As I joined Jon’s project late, was busy, and had to borrow a camera with a working light meter (thank you Adan De La Garza) – I had 1.5 days to take the pictures before the deadline.  I like to go to the lake pictured when I am in a bad mood.  This is very cliche, but unfortunately true, because…that’s the way I am. It is the closest thing to a beach I could find, which was my usual ritual before, having lived on the east coast.  Something about expanses of water is very soothing to me.  I can’t explain.  The lake pictured is frozen, and yes, I have walked to the middle of it, unaccompanied.

The area near the high wires are a specific place for me also.  It is the only place I know of in which electricity going through wires is extremely audible.  It is a strange sound, even stranger still that
something so common to those in a more populated area would have to be some place like here to really hear it, and certainly a foreign sound to hear in such a landscape.  I had to take these pictures quickly because I was in someone’s driveway.  As soon as I started shooting, they needed to leave, so I had to as well.

Getting used to seeing the near-constant mountains has been strange for me, as well as the expanses of flat, nearly wrinkled land.  I’m afraid I over-included them, but they are enormous, and they are Boulder (though a few are actually of downtown Denver). Other places pictured are areas on the campus of the university of Colorado at Boulder.  The architecture has a greek feel to it, and you can tell by the obliquely placed solar panels in front of Mackey auditorium (where I sneak down to the basement to play on the university’s pianos-I am not a student there) that it is eco-conscious even at the risk of looking not entirely geometrically perfect (as most of this area of Colorado is).  

By the freaky buffalo mascot/statue is probably a tour group.  I don’t know them.  Some pictures are also on the walking mall in downtown Boulder.  It’s not a place I particularly like, but a place that defines Boulder – with carved rocks for children to play on and a light “fountain” (to not waste water), it truly is an odd bit of Americana and certainly not of the type that is usually imagined.

This place is odd, and I haven’t gotten used to it yet.  Light at night acts more like fallen dust on the ground, and all the right angles and perfectly straight telephone poles make me think I am living in an architectural model rather than a real place.  I haven’t gotten used to it yet, and I don’t think I will, but it’s alright for the moment.  And the people here are pretty nice.  Oh, and that star is this stupid christmas light-ed thing they place on the side of the mountain in the winter.  It’s totally cheesy, and I hate it now, but I’ll probably think of it as an oddly defining thing in a few years…

-Katie Konrad

You can see some of Katie’s excellent video work here.