Peace · Resilience · Perspective · Renewal
I Want To Send You A Free Print.
Four images from North Dakota. Choose the one you need right now and it's yours. Just enter your first name, your best email and hit the submit button to immediately choose your print.
The print is my gift. You cover $11 for shipping.
Your email stays with me. Nobody else gets it, ever.
Recent Publications, Clients & Collectors
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Four images from the North Dakota Badlands and prairies, and each one carries transformation.
Peace, resilience, perspective, and renewal are what the Badlands give me. Choose the one you need and it's yours.
The print is my gift. You cover $11 for shipping, which is what it costs to get it to your door pristine and damage-free.
PEACE
Quiet Flow - For when everything has been too loud.
RESILIENCE
Resilient Frontier - For when you are being asked to hold.
PERSPECTIVE
Hopeful Ascent - For when you cannot see what's over the next hill.
RENEWAL
Portrait of Warmth - For when you need an infusion of joy.
A bunch of people have asked me...
"Why are you giving prints away for free?"
Because what happened to me out in North Dakota is the thing I most want to hand to somebody else, and I have never found a better way to do it than a print.
A photograph isn't finished until it's on paper. On a screen it gets skimmed and forgotten in one motion, but a print in a room works on you slowly without asking for attention.
Until one day you notice it has changed something. That is the whole reason I make these. Giving one away is just the fastest way to show you what I mean.
What Shows Up
I pack every one of these myself.
Six inches square, printed on archival paper, from the same files and the same process behind the large work that hangs in homes and offices around the country.
It ships flat rather than rolled, backed with rigid board inside a stay-flat mailer, so it arrives ready to frame or ready to stand on a shelf exactly as it is. No creases, no tube curl, nothing to flatten out under a stack of books for a week.
I pack every one of these myself.
Why This Size
Small footprint. Big presence.
I spend as much time as I can in wide open country. The Badlands, mostly. The first hour out there is usually wasted, because my head is still moving at the speed I brought with me. Somewhere in the second hour it lets go and I take a breath I didn't have to decide to take.
That breath is what I'm after when I make a photograph. Not a record of a place, but a dependable way back to a feeling.
Most of my work is large on purpose. At four feet, five feet, eight feet across, a picture stops decorating a room and starts establishing it, and I love making work at that scale because of what it does to a space.
But scale is a tool. The point is deciding what you look at.
The pace of things is not going to ease off on its own, and it will fill whatever space you leave open. A six-inch print on a nightstand, a kitchen counter, or the corner of a desk is a small piece of ground you took back on purpose. It does that job every morning whether or not it fills a wall.
Already On Their Walls
Visual Anchors in an Accelerating World
Is This Only About Fine-Art?
Not even close.
Five years, thirty-plus site visits, more than ten thousand images. The building of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
For five years I photographed the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library as it rose out of bare prairie in Medora. Every phase, from the first concrete pour to opening day.
Somewhere in there I understood what the architects had actually built. It is more than a building. It was designed so that a person could walk through it, have something happen to them, and carry that home to wherever they live.
That is the same thing I am after with a photograph. The building is more than a building, my pictures are more than pretty pictures, and the Badlands are more than rugged terrain. All three are gateways to transformation, and the only requirement is being present enough to receive it.
If you found me through the library, I'm not finished talking about it. I have more to say about that place now than I did while it was going up. What changed is that I stopped chasing construction updates and started writing about what the place does to a person, which turns out to be the same thing these prints do at a much smaller scale.
NORTH DAKOTA AND NASHVILLE-BASED PHOTOGRAPHER CHAD ZIEMENDORF
Meet The Photographer
I'm Chad Ziemendorf. I use a camera to create visual anchors in an accelerating world, revealing the enduring wisdom found in both monumental human endeavors and vast quiet landscapes.
My path here wasn't direct. Professional baseball taught me discipline and pattern recognition. Photojournalism at the San Francisco Chronicle and Reuters taught me to curate simplicity out of chaos. Years of legacy documentation taught me that a comprehensive visual record preserves meaning that would otherwise be lost.
What I found out there was peace, resilience, perspective, and renewal, in that order and over a long time. I did not go looking for pictures. The pictures were how I figured out what had happened to me, and making them is how I hand it to somebody else.
Through Boundless, I'm inviting you into that experience.
Image of Chad Ziemendorf by Crystal Wendlandt
What Arrives After - Boundless Newsletter
Sunday afternoons, mostly.
Boundless is the main event. A longer letter with new images, what I'm finding in the field, and the thinking behind the pictures. It goes out Sunday mid-day, though a week in the Badlands will occasionally move it.
Midweek you'll get one photograph. Where it came from, what it does to a room, and a way to see it larger if you want to. A small way to brighten your inbox on a Tuesday.
Unsubscribe whenever you want.
What Claiming Your Print Starts
Your print makes you a member.
Claiming your free print makes you a member of the Boundless Society. Membership costs nothing. No points, no expiration, no enrolling. It begins with that first print and it only ever grows.
All people who claim their free print become members of the Boundless Society, my loyalty program that rewards repeat collectors.
Your Questions, Answered.
Is the print really free?
Yes. The print costs you nothing. You cover $11 for shipping and packaging, and that's the whole transaction. There's no trial, no subscription, and no charge later.
Why is there a shipping charge?
Because a print in a plain envelope arrives bent, and I'm not willing to send you one that way. The $11 covers postage plus the materials it takes to get a photograph to your door flat: a rigid board backer, a protective sleeve, and a stay-flat mailer. That's what it costs me. I'm not making money on shipping.
How big is it, and what is it printed on?
Six inches by six inches, on archival paper, printed from the same files as the large work. Small enough for a shelf or a desk, and it frames easily in a standard six-inch square frame if you'd rather hang it.
When will my print arrive?
I print and pack these myself, so they go out in batches once a week rather than one at a time. In most cases you'll have it within five to eight business days. If I'm out in the field that week it may run a day or two longer, and it will still show up.
Why are you doing this?
Because what happened to me out in the Badlands is the thing I most want to hand to somebody else, and I have never found a better way to do it than a print.
A photograph isn't finished until it's on paper. On a screen it gets skimmed and forgotten in the same motion, but a print in a room you live in works on you slowly, without asking for attention, until one day you notice it has changed something. That is the whole reason I make these. Giving one away is just the fastest way to show you what I mean.
How often will you email me?
A longer letter on Sunday mornings, and one short note during the week built around a single picture. Unsubscribe whenever you want and I won't take it personally.
What happens to my email address?
It stays with me. I don't sell it, rent it, or share it with anyone.
Do I have to love North Dakota?
No, but you will. That's where these images come from and where I found what I was looking for. But peace, resilience, perspective, and renewal don't belong to a state. Nobody has ever had too much of any of them.
READY FOR YOUR PRINT?
Take the one you need.
My favorite part of this whole thing has always been the printing. Holding a photograph on museum-quality paper, knowing it's headed for somebody else's hands, is an honor I don't take lightly.
That's why I want to give you one. Pick the one you keep coming back to and I'll send it.
Privacy protected. Welcome emails start right away, weekly issues every Sunday.
Sign up now then choose from these four options...
PEACE
Quiet Flow - For when everything has been too loud.
RESILIENCE
Resilient Frontier - For when you are being asked to hold.
PERSPECTIVE
Hopeful Ascent - For when you cannot see what's over the next hill.
RENEWAL
Portrait of Warmth - For when you need an infusion of joy.