When my friend, photographer Klea McKenna, invited me to help her out for a day on her latest project, I quickly said yes. I knew she was bringing together a bit of local history, a lens-less camera, a wild landscape, and 12 hours of changing light. But I didn’t think too much about what exactly the day would entail, I just thought it’d be fun and out of the ordinary. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Klea heading to the look-out structure to expose a paper airplane

Looking west from the camera’s position

Klea’s handmade lens-less camera

Klea was working on the second project in her Paper Airplanes series, a photographic installation that would be comprised of 57 paper airplanes folded out of color photographic paper installed in a giant triangle. The project is based on and inspired by a bit of local history— during WWII, soldiers were deployed to man several anti-aircraft lookout posts along the Marin and Sonoma coast. All day and all night these soldiers looked west, watching the sky and horizon over the Pacific Ocean for signs of enemy planes. But they saw no enemy planes, instead they only witnessed the light change and watched hundreds of sunsets.

The project is a kind of performative photographic act that places Klea in the position of the soldiers who guarded the coastline and interprets their prolonged observation of the sky into an abstract visual art form. So, the plan for the day was that Klea would expose the paper airplanes on site at the anti-aircraft lookout post at Tennessee Cove in Marin Headlands. Beginning at dawn and ending at dusk, she would expose one plane every 10 minutes using camera made from a large biscuit tin. My job would be to help her fold the photographic paper into airplane shapes in portable dark bags, while she loaded them into the camera, and then exposed and unloaded them.

Our base of operations at another leftover military structure

Klea unloading and reloading paper airplanes in a portable dark bag

Klea exposing a paper airplane

Our day started early— we were in the Tennessee Valley parking lot by 7.30am. We hiked the two miles in to the cove carrying equipment and all the food and water we would need for the next 12 hours. The air was cold and the wind whipped through the high green grasses, but we walked the trail quickly, with wild turkey and quail scattering out in front of us. Once we got to the top of the cliff and reached the concrete lookout structure (called a base-end station) I realized how utterly unprepared for the day I was. The wind came at us with unrelenting force. I cursed my decision to wear a stupid pair of Keds without socks. I cursed the grit being thrown in my eyes, and the dark gray brooding sky, and the flimsy jacket I had thought would do right by me. We huddled against the side of the base-end station and tried to get to work. But the cold numbed our fingers and the wind threatened to send everything flying off the cliff into the ocean. We decided to move down the trail a bit, to another leftover military structure that could offer us more shelter from the wind. And this is where we spent the next 12 long, cold, and kind of amazing hours.

I sat with my back against hard concrete and the portable dark bag in between my outstretched legs and got to work folding planes. We diligently kept time to expose each paper airplane to the changing light, and every 10 minutes Klea ran to the cliff’s edge with the loaded biscuit box camera. We did this all day long. I feel the need to stress this fact— ALL DAY LONG— as the wind raged about and the cold creeped further and further down, closing in around my bones. Our fingers ached from all the folding, our backs stiffened from all the hunching, and our toes went frozen in our shoes. We talked to get through it, endlessly, about anything and everything.

Exposing a paper airplane on top of the look-out structure

The look-out structure

At one point we got to talking about the soldiers who had inspired this whole damn thing. We talked about their endurance, their patience, their sense of duty, and their anticipation for something that never happened. I thought about them up on the cliff, hunkered in that domed structure, just waiting and watching, with nothing to see but the sky, the sea, the land, the changing light and all those sunsets. Those soldiers and all those countless hours began to feel more real; they were no longer just facts on a page torn from a history book. A new kind of understanding of what the soldiers had experienced and witnessed moved through me, across every stiff muscle in my body and every wind-blasted inch of my skin. The sun came out in the late afternoon, and as I watched shadows stretch and the dirt glint and glimmer, my imagination kept after those soldiers.

As the day moved into evening, nothing got easier, but folding paper airplanes, and watching Klea run out to the cliff, and observing the changing colors of the sea and the moving shadows across the land took on a whole new meaning. It was close to dark when Klea finally exposed the last plane and hastily we packed everything up and headed out. We talked much less on our hike back, and though our strides were long and steady, the path seemed endless and each minute the darkness around us grew denser. Exhausted and lost in thought, we moved through the valley. We touched the grass, and observed the hillsides and the thickets, and spoke at intervals about the names of flowers and the possibility of encountering a mountain lion. In the parking lot, I thought about Klea’s project—this wild idea of hers, an endeavor that took on a historical fragment and brought attention and effect to every detail of that day, inciting a wonder and appreciation I had not anticipated. And I thought of those soldiers, and how their story was now in some way our story.

Klea at her studio working out the formation of the exposed paper airplanes

One of the 57 paper airplanes

More finished paper airplanes!

Klea’s Paper Airplanes series will be at Haines Gallery in a group exhibition with thirteen other artists working with alternative methods of photography. The show, entitled Science of Sight, opened on Thursday, June 9th and continues until July 16. Haines Gallery is at 49 Geary Street, Fifth Floor, San Francisco

For more information, check out: www.hainesgallery.com.
And to see more of Klea’s work, go to: www.kleamckenna.com

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