Ren Faire: Same time, next year
June 2, 2020
Knight, knight: A historic plague knocks Ren Faire off its horse. Picturing how it was & looking ahead.
Knight, knight: A historic plague knocks Ren Faire off its horse. Picturing how it was & looking ahead.
This year’s big bash is gone with the pandemic wind. As a scaled-back virtual fest begins, an ode to the way it was.
A photographer talks to himself about shadows and the mysteries of black & white.
As we isolate ourselves, photographer K.B. Dixon finds beauty in the splendid solitude of ordinary things.
As the “real” museums shut down. K.B. Dixon tours the city’s murals and discovers a free exhibit on the streets.
As the pandemic empties the city’s center, a paean to the rhythm that has always given Portland a time of solitude.
As online orders keep the great gathering spot going, a look back on its glory days and hope for their return.
As other subjects retreat into solitude, K.B. Dixon shifts his camera gaze to the beauty of domestic things.
We know. It’s tough. But some Portlanders have been practicing it a long time. A look at states of solitude.
Photo First: A Little Street Music (or, remembering Portland as it so recently was).
Ten portraits in black and white by K.B. Dixon of Oregon artists making their mark on the world.
Ten portraits by K.B. Dixon of Oregon writers who are making a mark, with excerpts from their work.
Portland Tuba Christmas makes a mighty sound in Pioneer Courthouse Square, renewing a pleasure we’ve been missing.
At the Portland Art Museum, a lively and well-adorned crowd celebrates Mexico’s Día de Muertos.
K.B. Dixon begins a new series of artist portraits, starting with the writers.
Astoria has a garish and dramatic history, its fraught founding meticulously chronicled in Peter Stark’s award-winning book—a book with a title as long as the city’s renovated river walk: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire—A Story of Wealth, Ambition,
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY K.B. DIXON The photographic portrait is a complex thing—an image gathered at the center of four corners. It is what the camera sees, what the photographer sees, what the viewer sees, and what the subject hides or reveals.
According to German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, it was in the European coffeehouses of the 17th and 18th centuries that the foundations of the Enlightenment were laid. In providing a new sort of social space, one that was neither wholly public nor wholly
Text and Photographs by K.B. DIXON “The portrait,” said legendary photographer Arnold Newman, “is a form of biography. Its purpose is to inform now and to record for history.” It is hard to imagine a better, more succinct summation of the genre.
Story and photographs by K.B. Dixon The Portland Roadster Show is one of the oldest and largest roadster shows in the country. Begun in 1956, it has evolved slowly over the years from its rebel roots in horsepower and chutzpah to its
About 2,000 people gathered Sunday on the Portland State University campus for the Portland Womxn’s March & Rally for Action, a combination of political rally, social dissent, feminist activism, assertion of racial and gender rights, call to environmental action, and street theater.
Text and Photographs by K.B. Dixon Photography essentially began as the art of portraiture. With the daguerreotype the portrait—previously painted and available only to an aristocratic few—became relatively inexpensive and available to everyone. John Szarkowski, the legendary director, curator, and poohbah-emeritus at New
Text and Photographs by K.B. Dixon Improbable as it sounds (pun intended), Tuba Christmas is a real thing. An inspired creation, it is a mix of Santa Claus and Surrealism. An annual event in Portland since 1991, it features some 300 or
Essay and Photographs by K.B. Dixon The Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum (which has branded itself with the stuttering acronym WAAAM) sits right next door to the Hood River Airport. It is one of the Columbia Gorge’s newer treasures. Housed in
Portland Saturday Market (which is, of course, open on Sundays as well) is a sort of curated street fair. Founded in 1974 by Sheri Teasdale and Andrea Scharf as a support for local artisans, it has grown over the years into the
ALBANY — Every small town wants something to put it on the map. Now, after fifteen years of hard work, Albany has that something—a remarkable new carousel. This project, which is called the Albany Carousel over its entrance and is officially named
Not too long ago I published a piece titled In the Frame: Eleven Men, which included portraits of eleven men. This is the second part of that In the Frame project: eleven women. As with the first installment, the faces here are
The Rose Festival Grand Floral Parade is coming up on Saturday, June 9, which means summer in Portland can’t be far behind—but more importantly, it means the Portland Pride Parade can’t be far behind. An extravagant, glitter-dusted celebration of LGBTQ culture, it
Essay and Photographs By K.B. DIXON The images of Portland included in my latest book of photographs were excerpted from a larger ongoing project—from what is basically a photographic journal, a personalized and idiosyncratic survey of the world around me, an archive that
Essay and photographs by K.B. DIXON A good picture tells a story, and nothing tells a story better—more eloquently, more efficiently—than the human face. The story these eleven faces tell, in part, is Portland’s. These are talented and dedicated people who have
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