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Larry Schwarm
Hatteberg's People
Reporter: Larry Hatteberg
| July 25, 2004--On Hatteberg’s People, Photographer and teacher Larry Schwarm of Emporia uses his cameras to document re-birth. He photographs the Flint Hills spring fire ritual. It’s fire that renews the prairie and at the same time creates magnificent photographs. |
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“I can come out here in the morning and not come back till night and sometimes I’ll go four and five hours without seeing anybody. It’s very, very calming.”
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Larry Schwarm found his niche. In the Flint Hills, where earth, wind and fire make Spring a memorable and unforgettable season. On a lonely road, it’s just he and his camera in the springtime dusk, as the man-made fires sweep across the open prairie. It’s power and beauty caught on film.
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Snap, Snap, Snap –
“I’ve always had a connectivity to the earth and this is one way I can reconnect with that.” |
For the past 11 years it’s photographs like these that made Larry Schwarm a dominant figure in the Flint Hills Spring fire ritual. Now the world is taking notice through his recently published award winning book ‘On Fire’.
“The experience of these fires is really so exhilarating. It’s really impossible to describe. To take one photograph and try to capture it is so difficult. Almost impossible to do.”
His new book is a collection of 68 photographs that are the results of a decades work and over a thousand rolls of film.
“Photography is my passion.” |
| As a professor of art at Emporia State, Larry’s home reflects his love of the arts, pictures of he and his wife painted by a friend line the walls. Other artwork adorns every nook and cranny of their creative home. |
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| “We also like to surround ourselves with creative people and most of the work in the house came from friends of ours.
On his shelves, books and books where his work in photography has been published.
“Hopefully you get a sense of what my experience was through this work.”
Upstairs, hours are spent on the fine detail work that go into each and every picture. |
And in his basement, is the darkroom where the negatives come alive through the eyes of an artist.
“I’m always really excited when I develop film and I hold it up for the first time to see what’s on there.”
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While Schwarm is a photographer of many subjects, he has become known for these pictures of the Flint Hills fires.
“Yeah, I’m very content. There is a part of me that always wants more, but I am exceedingly grateful and pleased with what I have.”
In his backyard, a mini-prairie complete with chickens and prairie flowers dominate his existence. |
Larry’s note:
All still photographs courtesy Larry Schwarm.
Larry Schwarm’s book “On Fire” is published by Duke University Press. It is the inaugural winner of the Honickman Foundation First Book Prize in Photography from the Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, N.C. |
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