The Evergreen State Fair

By mid-August, the Evergreen State Fair was the 9th fair I had photographed this year. I can say that this year has felt a little different in that I haven't gone to as many fairs but the time I have spent at each fair has been a lot more. I'm digging less holes but they run deeper. This Fair Season project has felt like I am just starting to grow into and embrace a style of shooting that feels (for me at least) authentic and more intimate than pictures I have made in the past.

This fair is probably my favorite one to visit because it is a good mix of small town and commercialized theme park feel. Many of the fairs I have travelled to are a very small community fair where there is no carnival, no giant corndogs, no private vendors - it's really a livestock show where the families (who mostly know each other) come out with their animals to compete for best in show ribbons. On the other hand, going to the Washington State Fair feels like going to an amusement park where the central focus of the fair is the carnival, the over the top food, and the rides - all of which are designed to get you to spend as much money as possible. The Evergreen fair feels like it sits right in the middle.

To give a little bit of back-story, I work as a nurse in a hospital in Seattle. Countless people have asked me why I spend so much time doing this if I am not getting paid for it. That question has really seeped into my brain and all I can say is that I want to make pictures for this project because it feels really meaningful for me. Perhaps the lack of financial relationship to my photographs has enabled a degree of freedom that I never would have had otherwise.

This project has really been a slow burn and it's been a refreshing challenge to not take the same kinds of pictures that I have taken in the past. One of the things I love about photography is that if I ever feel like there isn't anything that is interesting enough to take a picture of - that feeling only exists inside of my head. If I keep the right head space, I can't help but notice that there are photographable things everywhere.

I'm really grateful for the Emerald City Dispatch because it has been an outlet for my thoughts on this project as it continues to unfold. As I write this, I have just finished photographing the State Fair and the project is done for the year. To be honest, I will need a bit of time to process all of the images I have taken in the last few months and I am not sure if I will pick it up again next year. For now, I will keep looking back at the photographs and try and divine some sort of meaning from them as I put them together in a larger body of work.