Books in the News: Accommodating Nature and Marking the Land
Congratulations are in order for two of the newest titles from the Center for American Places: John Rohrbach's Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke and Jim Dow's Marking the Land: Jim Dow in North Dakota were honored by American Photo magazine in their year-end issue.
Accommodating Nature was selected as one of the Best Retrospectives of the Year and Marking the Land was chosen as one of the overall Best Photo Books of 2007. Of Marking the Land, American Photo says
There is a temptation to describe Jim Dow as a latter-day Walker Evans, even though most of Dow's work is in color. . . . But while Evans insisted to the point of arrogance that his work, despite its descriptive nature, was the highest art, Dow has no such pretension. His images are artful, to be sure, but they are less about the artist and more about the people who create the things depicted. Despite their precisionism, they are far more human than Evans's pictures. . . . The totality of Dow's new monograph, Marking the Land: Jim Dow in North Dakota, makes it clear that the photographer's images are not judgment-free records of weathered roadside attractions. The best of them quietly critique our attitudes toward the particular landscapes we inhabit. . . . Dow's timeworn building facades have a plainness that suits the prairie's nondescript topography and camouflages the dense decor of their interiors, which are crammed full as if to nullify the starkness of North Dakota's great outdoors.
A slide show featuring images from Marking the Land and the other honored titles can be viewed on American Photo's website.
Read the review of Marking the Land in American Photo's Best Photo Books of 2007
Learn more about Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke