The Flyfish Journal - The Flyfish Journal 13.4
UP THE PAN: Derek Johnston’s Deep Ecology
Words: Jason Rolfe 2022-06-24 10:37:56
Several days of double-digit subzero temperatures on a section of river that doesn’t see sun in the dead of winter allowed for anchor ice to form on the bottom of the river, revealing a spectacular array of color in the frigid landscape. Photos and Caption: Derek Johnston
A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
—Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
For Derek Johnston, it’s always been about rivers. He was 7 years old when he won a camera in a supermarket grand reopening raffle in Youngstown, NY, and right there, in the flows of the Niagara River, he found his first photographic obsession. He realized right away that fractions of a second allow you to see things you miss with the naked eye, so much so that the flow of a river can be frozen—or drawn out—depending on the whims of the photographer and the tools at hand.
He applied to exactly one college out of high school, the Rochester Institute of Technology (just down the road from Eastman Kodak and esteemed in the world of photographic arts), because he’d known exactly what he wanted to do since he was 7. An artist’s residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in the middle of Colorado’s Rockies gave him his first taste of the west, and that was that. Johnston moved to the Frying Pan River valley in the mid-’90s, and soon after found his new Niagara.
The collection of images Johnston refers to as “Up the Pan” span a time period that almost matches his time in the valley. The over 500 images he considers part of this project—of which the selection here is a tiny portion—include images Johnston took in the latter part of the last century. On its face, it seems like a mammoth undertaking, until you realize that for Johnston it has simply been a matter of better seeing what he calls his “bigger backyard.”
The images are arranged chronologically “by the day they were created (ignoring the year) in order to reveal not just the biological diversity,” Johnston writes, “but also the phenology of this incredible landscape.” Which is another way of saying that for the past 24 years Johnston has always had a camera by his side, and whether he was on his way to work as a photography professor at Colorado Mountain College, on a hunting or fishing excursion, or simply out for a hike in the high country, he made a point of paying attention and leaving no detail unexamined.
“I prefer to move at a pace that helps conceal my presence and allow for close-up and intimate encounters with creatures great and small,” Johnston says. “When photographing, I go without a particular objective and strive to be present in whatever space I am in and open to the opportunities any signs I encounter may create. The stress of a robin’s voice and concern for my presence may mean that a nest is nearby. Finding that nest can lead to weeks of observation as the young birds are born and fledge.”
The naturalist Aldo Leopold did much the same, gathering his observations of his own “bigger backyard” in A Sand County Almanac. Johnston makes clear that this naturalist’s eye for the landscape and its parts are at the core of his attempt to capture—and by capturing, understand—the greater Frying Pan ecosystem. His primary interest is Leopold’s “biotic community”—from the pine tree to the black bear, from the hummingbird to the mayfly.
“[Leopold’s] words represent the philosophical core of the Deep Ecology movement,” Johnston says. “These photographs are my homage to the Frying Pan River seen through the lens of this philosophy.”
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