Image: Jesse Burke, “I See a Darkness,” 2012, Archival pigment print.

Jesse Burke’s series “Wild & Precious” is on view at the Vermont Center for Photography:

The Wild & Precious works bring together treasures from a series of road trips traveled over 5 years by photographer Jesse Burke and his daughter Clover to explore the natural world. To encourage a connection between his child and nature, Burke used these adventures to give her an education that he considers essential—one that develops appreciation, respect, conservation, and self-confidence. Together this father-and-daughter team studied beaches, land, sky, and animals. While on the road, they documented the routes they drove, the landscapes they discovered, the creatures they encountered, even the roadside motels where they slept. This book is as much about love and parenting as it is a hands-on training manual of new age environmentalism. Wild & Precious reveals the fragile, complicated relationship that humans share with nature and serves as a call to arms for parents and children everywhere: Get outside! Bookended by poetic letters the two wrote to one another, Wild & Precious is a modern-day love story between parent and child, natural world and society. Burke writes, “I want my children to genuinely understand how magical the world we inhabit is and how we, as humans, are an integral part of the system. I want them to feel a deep connection to every aspect of their surroundings.”

Jesse Burke
“Wild & Precious”
April 7 – 30, 2017

Vermont Center for Photography
49 Flat Street
Brattleboro, VT 05301
(802) 251-6051
For more information

Browse Jesse Burke’s series “Wild & Precious” at ClampArt
Browse all of Jesse Burke’s work at ClampArt

Blog post by:
Raechel McCarthy, Associate Director