Without Purpose

This selection of images were taken on the road from Los Angeles to New Orleans during July 2019. Most of the images were taken on a Mamiya Super 23 medium format camera from the 1960's on Kodak film; the rest are 35mm film photos.

A complete set of images from this trip appear in my photo book "Without Purpose." Here is an excerpt from the introduction by philosophy professor James V. Martin:

"How can art be done without purpose? How can a photographer, in particular, aim his camera without aiming at something else?

Klipfel lays out the simple facts of his life without artifice or aim to make extraordinary, but at the same time he manages to grip us with the intensity of his honesty and attention to detail. It may be that this way of looking without looking for is what allows the world, as Knausgaard suggests, “to step forward from the world” when art “happens” and also what allows art to be created without purpose. The images in this collection place a world before us without comment and aim to invite us into this world without calculation. When they speak to us it’s because in them the everyday has been allowed to speak for itself and let us know that it can be extraordinary  without further sprucing."