Larry Schwarm's Prairie Fire Series Wins First Book Prize in Photography

Inaugural Competition Draws Nearly Five Hundred Entries

Kansas-based photographer Larry Schwarm has been selected to receive the inaugural Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman Foundation First Book Prize in Photography for his series of color images capturing the dramatic prairie fires that sweep across the vast grasslands of his native state each spring.

Renowned photographer and writer Robert Adams was the prize’s inaugural judge. "Larry Schwarm’s photographs of fire on the prairie are so compelling that I cannot imagine any later photographer trying to do better," said Adams. "His pictures convince us that seemingly far away events are close by, relevant to any serious person’s life."

Schwarm "engages our attention first by heightening our amazement at the sensuality of fire," Adams continued. "Most of us have enjoyed looking into a fireplace, but few of us have observed as well as he has the astonishing shapes and colors and fluidity of fire. He is so skilled in recording its appearance that occasionally we almost hear the burning and feel the warmth."

Schwarm will receive a grant of $3,000, publication of a book of photography, and inclusion in an exhibition of prizewinners. Adams will write the introduction for the book, which will be published in fall 2003 by Duke University Press in association with Lyndhurst Books of the Center for Documentary Studies.

Schwarm, a photography teacher at Emporia State University, first started making photographs about thirty years ago, when he was an undergraduate at the University of Kansas. He has widely exhibited his photographs of the Kansas landscape, and his work is included in the collections of a number of American museums. The collection of prairie fire photographs released this fall will be his first book.

"My photographs are made on the largest remaining expanse of North American tallgrass prairie, the Flint Hills in east-central Kansas," said Schwarm. "Fire is an essential part of the prairie ecosystem. Without fire, this prairie would have been forested. Over time, what started as a natural phenomenon became an annual event controlled by man."

Over the past twelve years Schwarm has taken more than one thousand rolls of film on his prairie fire project. "It has never been my intention to document in the strictest sense of the word, but rather to capture every essence of the fires, which have distinct personalities ranging from calm and lyrical to angry and raging," he says. "Working with the formality of the square-format camera, I translate the sublime and mystical character of the burning landscape into images that impart sensuous and menacing distillations. I am interested in minimalist space and the emotional power of color. Fire has a connection to our collective unconscious. It is good and evil, soothing and terrifying, protection and threat, destruction and rebirth."

Schwarm’s work was selected from close to five hundred entries in the inaugural First Book Prize competition. Anna Kuperberg, a freelance photographer who lives in San Francisco, received an Honorable Mention in the competition for her photographs of children on St. Louis’s South Side. "I so much wish we could have published two books," Adams said, responding to Kuperberg’s work.

The biennial CDS/Honickman Foundation First Book Prize competition is open to American photographers of any age who have never published a book-length work and who use their cameras for creative exploration, whether it be of places, people, or communities; of the natural or social world; of beauty at large or the lack of it; of objective or subjective realities. The prize honors work that is visually compelling, that bears witness, and that has integrity of purpose.

American photographers who are pursuing work of creative or social importance have too few opportunities for support and recognition. This is especially true when photographers are engaged in personal or in-depth projects that do not have direct commercial appeal. While there are other sources for grants and fellowships in photography, the chance to see a body of work in print, as a coherent book-length work, is rare. Concerned about this problem and recognizing their shared interests, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and The Honickman Foundation, based in Philadelphia, came together to create this new and important book-publication prize.

The next First Book Prize in Photography competition will be held in 2004. For more information, see the CDS Web site at http://cds.aas.duke.edu/grants/index.html.

The Center for Documentary Studies, an interdisciplinary educational organization affiliated with Duke University, connects the arts and humanities to documentary fieldwork, drawing upon photography, filmmaking, oral history, folklore, and writing as catalysts for education and change. CDS supports the active examination of contemporary society, the recognition of collaboration as central to documentary work, and the presentation of experiences that heighten our historical and cultural awareness. CDS achieves this work through academic courses, research, gallery and traveling exhibitions, annual awards, book publishing, community-based projects, and public events.

The Honickman Foundation (THF) is dedicated to the support of projects that promote the arts, education, health, and social change. Embodied in this commitment is a fundamental belief in the power of the "family unit" and in the necessity of a strong community to support it. THF is dedicated to a variety of projects that strengthen and bolster both individuals and families. Though of disparate substance, what each project has in common is its creative potential. At the heart of the mission of The Honickman Foundation is the belief that creativity enriches contemporary society, because the arts are powerful tools for enlightenment, equity, and empowerment, and must be encouraged to effect social change as well as personal growth. To these ends The Honickman Foundation invests its time and resources.

From top to bottom:

Fire near Cassoday, Kansas, 1990.

Earth, Fire, and Water, 2-Bar Ranch, Chase County, Kansas, 1994.

Burning grass, Lyon County, Kansas, 1994.

Prairie Fire near Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, 1992.