Fleeting Images

Photographing a Vanishing Way of Local Life

Some people look at a dilapidated barn and see an ugly blemish on the landscape. Champlain College student Ben Haulenbeek ’08 sees a poignant reminder of our rural past -- and the consequences of development. “A lot of people come to Vermont because it’s a quaint little place,” the Westford, Vermont, resident says, “but even someone my age can look back and remember when a shopping center used to be a farm.”

Haulenbeek recently began collaborating with his father, Bill, in capturing barn images using infrared photography. Bill Haulenbeek has been photographing area barns for about two decades, and now father and son are planning a book to showcase the subject.

Infrared photography records the near-infrared part of the spectrum, obscuring colors usually visible to the eye. Trees and grass take on a ghostly hue. Skies are dark. The spectral images are well matched to rendering phantoms of a way of life dematerializing before our eyes. The photography project also meshes with Ben Haulenbeek’s interest in environmental and economic sustainability. On a recent trip to China, he shot documentary video footage for Green Across the Pacific, an exchange program between U.S. and Chinese students focusing on environmental and economic topics. He calls the fleeting images of Vermont barns the “documentation of a part of the world we once depended on.”

—Karen Craigo