Seth Sysum wasn't taking pictures when I first met him on an afternoon street corner across from Ocean Beach in San Francisco. That is, he hadn't unpacked his camera yet. But I got the feeling he was absorbing all things visual, taking pictures with his mind. Seth was looking and thinking about how light was bouncing off the polished train tracks of the Muni Metro. He was watching shadows move across the stairs that led to the sand. He was burning in the image of a black wetsuit drying on the hood of a rusted car.
It's that habit of seeing that feeds his desire to take pictures. He's looking for that moment that suits him, where countless details of foreground and background and lighting and movement all seem to click.
Seth is a reserved and thoughtful man. His movements are slow and meditative. His eyes are large and brown, and just behind them there's hints of a tortured soul who is just searching for a bit of peace. Of course, all of this bleeds through to his work.
The first thing one notices about Sysum's photography is that it is dominated by an incredible sense of stillness. A fog shrouded palm tree, a bright surfboard laid out on the rocks of low tide, a longboarder setting up on a long green wall. The stark interior of a cheap Las Vegas hotel room stares back at you. Even action shots seem to bring a sense of order that makes the viewer feel rested, gives them pause. They're pictures that refuse sound. Many are familiar shots, images we've seen in each of our own memories... only there's something else there that only the photographer himself can add. Or take away.
When asked about this phenomenon, Seth shifts a bit and gathers a slow, thoughtful smile. "I try to give a solitary feeling, because that's how I feel... I'm trying to capture the absence of something I see."
What he sees, or strives to see, is a more broader view, "a second or third person view", as Seth puts it. "I can't stand those surf magazine images that are so closed in and dramatic that you can't help but see all the sponsor's names on a board, or so tight you're looking at water droplets coming off of some guy's leg hair. That's not what you see when you go for a surf. I don't have eagle eyes when I'm watching people surf. I want to see where the surfer came from on that wave, and where he's going."
These pulled back images are reminiscent of Ron Stoner's work, or that of Craig Peterson (from The Far Shore). A parade of black and white swells, none of them breaking, roll toward an empty line-up. The white water of a rivermouth diagonally mirrors that of a breaking wave in the distance. Two men look off in different directions, lost in quiet reflection, framing a surfer below them engulfed in the foam of Steamer Lane. Surfers are faceless, nameless, anonymous. Sysum's reverence for the shoreline often places nature's strength and beauty over that of human recognition.
Sysum has very little equipment. He got into the act after his mother bought him a used Vivitar V4000. He had got the itch to create with photography after being inspired by a series of pictures in a CD booklet from the Bay Area band dredg, with whom he still carries a close relationship, shooting them at various performances.
Equipped with the gift from his mom, Sysum started taking pictures of anything and everything. "A lot of film was wasted," he laughs, "but lessons were learned." He started shooting before and after his surf sessions, in and around Santa Cruz. The biggest challenge has been to take many of the well know spots and put a fresh perspective on them. Places like the Lane are over-photographed, but Seth appears upbeat. "I think there are plenty of new views to be captured out there, as well as some of the other places."
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