Part 1 “The Albuquerque Balloonist” — expanding on the project
I’ll be using my website to blog about my progress on The Albuquerque Balloonist, so check back often! I started work on The Albuquerque Balloonist in January of 2022 not long after returning home from grad school. I had just spent the last three years living in Maine and traveling about South and East Asia for research. I had planned on returning home to New Mexico for a visit after graduating, but finishing school during one of the peaks of the pandemic had left me without access to many international work opportunities I may have pursued. Because of what can only be described as the global fuckening of all that society had thought was stable and sacred due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to return to my roots. Truly grateful to be back home in New Mexico, I’ve since made work for myself using some of the skills I’d practiced during my recent research.
Truthfully I’ve been busier than ever. I spent time in 2021 using my photography to collaborate with a high-profile Indigenous artist. I helped Santa Fe’s Kiwanis Club build Zozobra, I published an article on the West Hawaii Aquarium Fishery, and I co-designed and built this photography website along with a more personal site where I share more about my work in marine science. Of importance to this project, I prioritized reconnecting with many of my friends in the Albuquerque hot air ballooning community. Going about my reunions with balloonists, I soon realized that many of my old friends had moved away; some had also passed away. Perhaps because I’d come home during the coronavirus outbreak, I couldn’t help but notice more change in the community than I’d expected to find upon returning.
From November to December of 2021, I drafted a proposal for a book that I’ve titled The Albuquerque Balloonist. The proposal included a list of over 70 open-ended interview questions intended to draw out conversations and stories from balloonists. This is a project grounded in culture and community. The Albuquerque Balloonist is an ethnography inspired by my ties to Albuquerque where I was born, and by the friendships I’ve made with balloonists while becoming one myself.
As a research methodology, modern ethnographic work has evolved since its scholarly inception in the early 1800’s, then practiced by anthropologists such as Gerhard Friedrich Müller. At times controversial due to the practice’s colonial origins, ethnography has been used to describe community and societal dynamics in both general and intimate detail. When I was completing my undergraduate studies in geography at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, I picked up a copy of Theodore Bestor’s ethnography on the Tokyo Metropolitan Wholesale Fish Market, better known as Tsukiji. This was my first introduction to a robust ethnographic work. Bestor spent many years living in Japan, learning the Japanese language, and frequenting Tsukiji and its surrounding neighborhoods and districts where he collected his data. I relied on his publication Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, to inform my own short-term research of the market. To produce an ethnographic publication, a researcher needs unique access to and understanding of the community they aim to study.
One of my goals in this book is to humanize balloonists by representing them as members of a unique and dynamic community that is one-of-a-kind. We are individuals with families, careers, personal struggles, and interests outside of ballooning. For many of us, ballooning is an important part of our identity, but it’s not the whole enchilada. Depending on our involvement in the community, balloonists might comprise a large part of our social networks, and sometimes even our families. To illustrate ballooning as an identity in addition to other personal attributes, after each interview (or sometimes before), I stage an environmental portrait with participants where I invite them to pose in a space that includes personal artifacts that communicate who they are. These photos will accompany their shared stories which I transcribe word-for-word from each interview.
Now feeling a sense of urgency to document what I can as the ballooning community continues to transform, I’ve been spending my weekend and some weekdays in Albuquerque meeting with as many balloonists as I can. I’m often scheduling four to five meetings with different balloonists from Saturday to Tuesday. Each meeting can take between 2 to 4 hours depending on how much a participant wants to share and how involved a photoshoot might become. Many of these meetings have taken place in people’s homes. We sit and talk in the kitchen or living room for a few hours. If I’m meeting with a balloonist I don’t already know, I start by sharing more about myself including my qualifications and my motivation for this project. I then pull out my audio recorder and laptop and proceed to read a participant disclosure before starting the interview. At the time of writing this blog post, I’ve interviewed 30 balloonists and a handful of non balloonists who have been influenced by the culture of ballooning.
In some cases, I’ll be traveling outside of Albuquerque to meet individuals. For example, to reconnect with the first pilot I crewed for in Albuquerque who has since moved away, I’ll be traveling to Houston, Texas. I’ll be traveling to Colorado to connect with a highly revered pilot who’s legacy in Albuquerque’s ballooning community is one I used to hear about as a child. Due to budget constraints, it can be cost prohibitive to travel to visit balloonists who have moved much further away. When possible, remote interviews over Zoom have been a second best option to traveling and meeting in person, though this doesn’t allow for portrait sessions.
Storytelling has always been an integral part of the ballooning experience. After each flight, balloonists often return to their launch site to tailgate and talk about the morning’s adventure. Collapsible chairs and tables come out. Coolers full of beer, water, juices, and soft drinks sit alongside tables dressed with finger foods. All the cool balloonists layout an assembly line of tortillas, shredded cheese, eggs, chorizo, and green chile. Everything you need to build yourself a proper breakfast burrito, or in some cases a Frito pie. Champagne is a must, along with orange juice for mimosas. I’m hopeful that by the time I’ve finished this project I’ll have enough data to reliably quantify what is perhaps the most important unknown about our community. Do Albuquerque balloonists prefer red or green chile?
NEW FEATURE! I’ve added a tally counter to the main Project Page for The Albuquerque Balloonist where you can track the number of interviews I’ve completed, photos I’ve taken, and yes, the preference of chile type by Albuquerque balloonists.
Check back for future updates on The Albuquerque Balloonist. Because I’m currently working on this project solo, I can use all the help I can get to make The Albuquerque Balloonist the best publication it can be. If you’re a balloonist of any age, pilot or crew, with history in Albuquerque and you’d like to share your story for this project, please contact me by email at contact@brycerisleyphotography.com
Thank you for your interest in The Albuquerque Balloonist and Bryce Risley Photography.
I’m working on this project as an independent artist and writer and I need your help to get it across the finish line. In addition to investing thousands of hours of my time into this project, I spend hundreds of dollars a month on fuel as I travel between meetings and ballooning events in and outside of Albuquerque. This work puts wear on my electronic equipment and my vehicle which I need to maintain to continue this project. Please consider making a donation so that I can invest the best of my resources into this work. Donors will be mentioned in a dedicated section in the book and on the website!
The Albuquerque Balloonist is a multi-year ethnographic documentary and art project spearheaded by artist, social scientist, and balloonist Bryce Risley. The outputs of this project will include a collectable, hard cover book publication, a series of museum quality collectable fine art photos, a website dedicated to archiving the culture of ballooning in Albuquerque and the stories of balloonists, and more!
