This Photographer Is Taking Touching Portraits of His Creative Neighbors Hunkered Down in the Catskill Mountains—All Safely From Six Feet Away

Before authorities put New York on lockdown, photographer
Casey Kelbaugh fled Manhattan for his
house in the hamlet of Lanesville, New York, a small community
stretched out alongside Stony Clove Creek in the Catskill
Mountains. As New York City was becoming the global epicenter of
the coronavirus, this valley, just two hours away, seemed a world
apart.

Kelbaugh has made a living for years shooting art-world
happenings like the Venice Biennale and Frieze Los Angeles for
outlets including the New York Times and Artnet News. Now
hunkered down in Lanesville, he spent the first few weeks waving to
his neighbors—a mix of creative types and longtime locals—from his
Subaru.

Before long, he also began photographing and interviewing
them—poets and fashion editors, chefs and artists, carpenters and
energy healers—all from six feet away. The confined framework, he
found, made for the ideal way to capture a time of change in the
Catskills, a region that for centuries has been a refuge for
creatives of all kinds.

Here, Kelbaugh shares a selection of the images—part of a
project he calls Six Feet Away—with
Artnet News, offering a vivid portrait of a rural community wading
through a global pandemic.

Schuyler Kauffman, 16,
eleventh grader. Lanesville, NY, April 14, 2020

Being out of school is lit. I hate school. A lot of people say
they miss it, I don’t. I’m hitting up different fishing holes,
riding my ATV, working on my car all day. There’s a lot of
homework, but I just do what I have to. And you get to do it
whenever you want, as long as you turn it in on time.

Piotr Redlinski, 48,
photographer. Lanesville, NY, March 21, 2020

I think this whole thing is going to push people to get back to
the basics, the land and strip away all the politics and
capitalism. Worst-case scenario is we go to war with China or have
or a second civil war.

Ron Zheng, 31, jeweler.
Lanesville, NY, March 20, 2020

I’m in close contact with a bunch of family members in China and
while we only have 20,000 cases right now, I really think it’s
gonna hit us a lot harder in America. Probably a combination of
both ignorance and arrogance.

Marc Rubin, 60, sculptor.
Lanesville, NY, April 28, 2020

I think we should start doing this every year for three months.
Let everything slow down so we all get a break. No traffic, no
pollution, no deadlines, no distractions—just isolation and time to
get your work done.

Michael Brownstein, 76,
poet. Chichester, NY, April 1, 2020

What we are experiencing is a dress rehearsal for climate
breakdown. This is the planet signaling that we cannot continue
this way. There needs to be a revisioning of how we are on
earth—competitive predatory capitalism destroys so much.

Josh Woolheater, 35, horse
trainer. Lanesville, NY, April 6, 2020

This whole thing has really impacted a friend of mine who raises
dairy cattle. They had to dump hundreds of gallons of milk because
no one would come pick it up for pasteurization. I guess they just
didn’t have the staff.

Amy Jackson, 74, caterer.
Lanesville, NY, March 25, 2020

Country people know how to do this. This is their strength.
People are cutting up padded bras, vacuum cleaner filters, and old
fabric from the attic and making masks out of them.

Blair Benjamin, 58,
carpenter. Lanesville, NY, April 7, 2020

Work has completely dropped off. Everyone who is up from the
city is in their houses, doing the work themselves. They’re working
remotely on their computers, so they don’t want others in the
house. And my clients also don’t want to spend any money, so they
are just doing everything themselves.

Jack LaRoux, 42, artist.
Lanesville, NY. April 24, 2020

I’m definitely feeling the effects—I had to postpone a solo show
next month in Woodstock and art fairs are being cancelled. But it
will give me time to focus on new work. As an artist, being
isolated for long periods of time can be ideal.

Kristin Knox, 34, fashion
copywriter. Lanesville, NY, March 21, 2020

I’m working remotely for a couple brands right now, but mostly
just trying to finish my novel. When I was covering the shows, I
was always fascinated by these female power editors, who grew up in
and grow old in the business. The story takes place over four
fashion weeks—New York, London, Paris, and Milan.

Mark Grieco, 58, chef.
Lanesville, NY, March 20, 2020

I do believe that restaurants that were already successful and
can weather the storm will come back, but the borderline ones—and
the catering industry—will be crushed. It’s a little bit of a
purge.

Christelle de Castro, 35,
director. Phoenicia, NY, April 7, 2020

Dating right now is all about FaceTime and Zoom. A woman I’ve
been talking to on one of the apps wants to set up a video meeting
while we listen to a playlist of her design. It’s nice in a way,
because you actually get to know one another.

Mark Benigno, 38, equities
trader. Lanesville, NY, March 24, 2020

You get to see the full spectrum of human behavior right
now—there are people that are putting themselves at risk to help
others and you have people putting others at risk by going on
spring break.

Jason Katchadourian,
furniture designer, 34. Lanesville, NY, April 25,
2020

We had planned to move up full time in May, but the pandemic
kind of forced us up here in mid-March, which has given us time to
to solidify our intentions. Being in the city and working as
artists, everything was so segmented and were were only getting one
end of the equation. The residency we are creating here at Diamond
Notch will be a crossover between art, agriculture, and ecology.
This will be place where the overall focus is to understand where
things come from. In the city we’re so far removed from the root of
anything. Where does food come from? Where do our materials come
from? A two by four for has almost nothing to do with a tree.

Clay Thurmond, 57, magazine
editor. Lanesville, NY, March 21, 2020

I was out in Brooklyn last Tuesday and Wednesday nights. On
Sunday evening, I came down with a high fever and realized I
probably have COVID-19 and need to get myself to isolation
immediately. But the worst part is worrying about
hospitalization—because there isn’t one anywhere nearby.

Leon Taufield, 57,
sandblaster. Lanesville, NY, April 9, 2020

The main thing is to keep what you got going on—keep the trucks
running. It’s very hard times right now. With the tree work we do,
we’re kind of essential because we’re helping people with trees
that have fallen on their houses. But the sandblasting has slowed
way down and it’s important to find ways to stay busy so you don’t
go crazy.

Scott Fernjack, 44, audio
engineer. Lanesville, NY, March 24, 2020

At some point, the numbers just become an abstraction. If I read
that diabetes kills 100,000 people a year, I would believe it, even
if it’s ten times more or less than that. We lead risky lives to
begin with—the cars we drive, the food we consume, and the pills we
take. At some point, the people that think they are at low risk,
have already recovered or just don’t care are going to get back out
there to try and make some cash. They will only be able to keep the
wolves at bay for so long.

Ricarda O’Conner, 68,
energy healer. Chichester, NY, April 4, 2020

After 9/11, my husband’s business downtown was closed and we
could no longer afford to stay in NYC. We were forced out—we never
thought we would leave New York. But this is worse. Not just the
uncertainty, but everything that is happening in the world right
now much more intense and terrifying than it was after 9/11. It was
horrific, but we had a sense of solidarity in the city. We were all
taking care of each other, we mourned together. But now we can’t be
around the ones we love, because it’s a silent killer and we don’t
know who has it.

Christina Koizumi, 51,
chief medical information officer. Lanesville, NY, April 25,
2020

I’ve had a cough for weeks and every time I cough I’m reminded
of this whole thing about it being the “China Virus.” For a few
weeks there, the racism that was unleashed became pretty
evident—until for better or worse—Italy became the epicenter of the
outbreak. Being Japanese-American, it hit a little close to home
and I couldn’t help think about internment and other tragic
examples in history.

Gary Kachadourian, 62,
printmaker. Lanesville, NY, April 28, 2020

The 1973 oil crisis was the most disruptive thing we had
experienced prior to this, but that was pretty lightweight. In
America, we’ve basically about complaining about anything that’s
inconvenient since World War II.

Miryam Velasquez, 51,
hairdresser. Lanesville, NY, March 20, 2020

I have about 85 regular clients on Steinway Street in Astoria. I
think most of them will return to me when things normalize, but
right now, people aren’t thinking about secondary services such as
mine.

Drew Stuart, 43, architect,
Lanesville, NY, April 14, 2020

We have lost over 30 percent of our work, so we have laid off 30
percent of our staff. It was a lot of neat stuff too, designing new
hotels in Austin and Union Square. It’s been hard. We’ve had two
rounds of layoffs and I put the third on hold because it was the
same day the Paycheck Protection Program passed. But we don’t have
any assurances that we will get it yet, so it’s a bit scary. Beyond
that, the troubling thing is that so much of our work has become
about calibrating social space—how people want to be in relation to
one another. Restaurants, clubs, spas, hotels—all of the places
where you have a lot of human contact.

Catherine Woolheater, 29,
high school secretary. Lanesville, NY, April 6, 2020

Obviously, we’ve been out of school for three or four weeks. My
colleagues and I really just miss the kids. Our hearts are just
broken for the seniors that don’t get to graduate. Some kids are
going home to bad situations or have social and emotional issues,
and I’m worried because I don’t get to check in with them
everyday.

Richard Roberti, 70,
retired plumber. Lanesville, NY, April 6. 2020

I left Yonkers almost 40 years ago after I was stabbed in the
heart with a knife. Came up here and raised 11 kids in this house.
And I’ll tell you what, I don’t trust anything anymore. If I got
sick, there’s no way I’d let them take me to the hospital, because
they’ll kill you. Why is it that when people stay home, they
recover, but when they go in and are put on respirators—they all
end up dead?

Christie Scheele, 62,
painter. Chichester, NY, April 1, 2020

Finally, people are talking about the issue of New York City
people fanning across the area to flee the coronavirus. It’s the
recent arrivals that pose a risk to us all. Anyone coming from the
global epicenter needs to be wearing face masks and gloves while in
public around here.

Sara Beck, 42, yoga
instructor. Chichester, NY, March 26, 2020

It’s so hard to be so isolated and so distant right now. And yet
there is another kind of connection happening. My online classes
are fuller than they ever were for my in-person classes! I’ve had
high school friends whom I’ve not seen in 20 years, family
members—from all time zones and regions of the country coming
together—breathing, moving, feeling less alone, remembering our
connection with ourselves and others. Perhaps the livestream
classes will remain a part of my weekly offering? Or maybe this
will just get the studio and our community through this difficult
time period.

Ina Kozel, 70, painter.
Lanesville, NY, April 28, 2020

I miss the friction of the city—the challenge of daily life. You
gotta get there on time. The traffic’s not helping. They don’t have
your size. The groceries are heavy. I’m very happy up here, but it
can be a little dull.

Amanda Pohan, 35,
multidisciplinary artist. Lanesville, NY, April 25,
2020

I’m learning a lot from this land. A pond that is round and
perfect doesn’t actually maximize biodiversity; a pond with a lot
of edges and inlets has a lot more species. The place where two
ecosystems meet has the most biodiversity—where ground animals meet
aquatic animals. Our administration seems to be interested in a
monoculture. But the idea that the place where a little friction
happens—that is really where life is most vibrant, generative, and
sustainable.

For more images, you can follow Kelbaugh on Instagram or find the complete story
here.

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His Creative Neighbors Hunkered Down in the Catskill Mountains—All
Safely From Six Feet Away appeared first on artnet
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