Photographer Eddee Daniel, author of Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, was recently interviewed on Milwaukee's "Morning Blend." In Urban Wilderness, Daniel guides us down the waterways of the Menomonee watershed and reveals how preserving urban rivers is key the quality of life and economic success of a thriving city such as Milwaukee. See the complete interview, including images from the interior of the book, here.
Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke, one of American Photo's 2007 Best Retrospectives of the Year, was also featured on several photography blogs near the end of 2007.
The 5B4 blog reviews Frank Gohlke's entire oeuvre of photography books and declares that Accommodating Nature is his latest success:
Throughout his other books, Frank has exhibited not only his talent for making images but also his remarkable talent for writing. What is an added joy about this new book is that Frank ties all of his various projects together with a running narrative of text that covers his life with photography as a near constant companion. Uncharacteristic of most retrospective type books, this one is not constructed with a strict chronological order to the images. The photographs follow the text in this regard and pleasurably serve as flash back and memory alongside Frank's steady narration. . . . If you are not familiar with the work of Frank Gohlke then this book would be a perfect introduction.
The muse-ings blog links to this review and also praises the exhibition of Accommodating Nature photographs at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Accommodating Nature exhibition runs through January 6th at the Amon Carter Museum and will then move to the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusetts from April 16 through July 13.
Read the full book review at 5B4 and notes about the exhibition at muse-ings
Learn more about the Accommodating Nature photography exhibition
Learn more about Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke
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
Ann M. Wolfe's Suburban Escape: The Art of California Sprawl has been receiving great praise, both for the book and for the exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Art of the same name.
Theo Douglas of Orange County Weekly claims that Suburban Escape "finds a ruinous beauty in the sterile sameness so many of us call home."
Karen E. Steen of Metropolis Magazine considers how Suburban Escape confonts our prejudices: "If you think nothing good has ever come out of the suburbs, consider the history of art and literature about suburbia. . . ."
Tracy Vogel of Wave Magazine credits Suburban Escape for its balance:
Suburban Escape takes an artist's-eye view of what folk songwriter Malvina Reynolds famously called "little boxes made of ticky-tacky," and the landscape that surrounds them. But this is no one-sided anti-development screed. It's clear that the artists hold complex and differing viewpoints. . . .
Read the Exhibition Review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian
Read the Exhibition Review in the San Jose Metro
Kim Stringfellow's cover image from Greetings from the Salton Sea was published in the New York Times as part of a review of the group exhibition "Ecotopia: The Second I.C.P. Triennial of Photography and Video," which runs through Jan. 7 at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street; (212) 857-0000.
Read the Review of the ICP show in the New York Times (only available temporarily)
Kim Stringfellow was interviewed by Bobby Tanzilo of OnMilwaukee.com in conjunction with an exhibit at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The center is located at 608 New York Ave, Sheboygan, WI 53082 and can be contacted at 920-458-6144. The exhibition runs until October 22.
Stringfellow describes the relations between art and science in her work, focusing on the environment and its degradation as it is manifested at the Salton Sea.
Read the interview with Kim Stringfellow
Learn more about the exhibition at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center
Brock Yates reviewed Arthur Krim's Route 66 in the June 17th issue of the Wall Street Journal:
The totally American essence of Route 66 is forever tattooed on the national psyche. The road is gone, but it will hardly be forgotten -- thanks, in part, to the author's labors. Since Mr. Krim delves into the historical at the expense of the breezy, some casual readers may find the amount of detail daunting, but others will be grateful for it. And the book will almost certainly be embraced by another group: future historians who seek a single-volume chronicle of the most famous stretch of highway in the U.S. In that sense, Route 66 is a roadside monument.
Jane Coulter reports on WBUR's Arts blog that John Willis and Tom Young, the photographers behind Recycled Realities, lectured at Boston University's College of Communications on their collaborations, revealing the "meaningful connections" in their work.
We throw away literally tons of trash everyday, and often never consider where it goes after the garbage truck picks it up. But the fate of the discarded fragments of our lives is a long journey, one which ultimately ends at isolated sites and lots across America. Photographers John Willis and Tom Young spent nearly four years documenting one such site, as they captured the subtle yet powerful narratives hidden within the paper waste bales at a mill in western Massachusetts. The result is Recycled Realities, a compelling visual essay of their explorations.
The Wednesday Journal recently ran an article on William Frederking and his book At Home. The article focuses on Frederking's biography and his work: "Shapes meet, lines align in the progression, which also moves the viewer from public spaces (sidewalk, front steps railing) into the visitor portion of the home (furniture, remote controls, kitchen items) to the upstairs and more private portions (a fertility chart near the bed, toiletries, a brassiere drying)."
In striking black-and-white still-life portraits, Frederking captures the small and large elements that define the spirit of his home, as well as revealing why the home is at the heart of the American dream. Home is a place where objects become enlivened and symbolic-a newspaper lying askew on the kitchen table, a fluffy bedspread spilling through the iron lattice of a bedframe, a staircase spiraling down into mysterious shadows-and thus affirm our existence. Everything we buy or touch, renovate or borrow becomes a mark of our selves, and these marks are nowhere more concentrated than in the home. Frederking's powerful visual sequence examines the simple backdrop that anchors our complicated lives-and ourselves.
Scott Fortino, author of Institutional, will be giving a tour and engaging in dialogue with curator Dominic Molon at the MCA in Chicago on March 14, 2006 at 6:30pm.
Scott Fortino's exacting images depict various sites and situations around Chicago, including restricted spaces such as jails and jury rooms which he has access to as a Chicago police officer. His rigorously formal approach to photography emphasizes the intriguing visual or structural aspects of otherwise overlooked spaces. The precision and clarity of his photographs provide a highly considered examination of how certain social experiences are controlled and mediated through interior architectural structures and details. Though best known for his pictures of institutional interiors, Fortino has recently expanded his focus to views of the city's lakefront and close-ups of wildflowers.
There will be an opening reception and book signing for Justin Kimball's Where We Find Ourselves on March 9, 2006 from 5 to 7pm in the Film and Photography Gallery at the Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photo and Video at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The show runs March 1-31.
Gallery Hours: Sunday to Thursday 1-9, Fri & Sat 1-6
Justin Kimball will also be signing copies of Where We Find Ourselves on March 11, 2006 at 3:30pm at Just Books Too, 28 Arcadia Road, Old Greenwich, Connecticut.
We throw away tons of trash every day, and often never consider where it goes after the garbage truck picks it up. But the fate of the discarded fragments of our lives is a long journey, one which ultimately ends at isolated sites and lots across America. Photographers John Willis and Tom Young spent nearly four years documenting one such site, as they captured the subtle yet powerful narratives hidden within the paper waste bales at a mill in western Massachusetts. The result is Recycled Realities, a compelling visual essay of their explorations.
Read the Press Release
Learn More
John Willis' web site
From National Lampoon's Vacation to the disastrous camping trips immortalized in Calvin and Hobbes, the American family vacation has often been portrayed as a non-stop comedy of errors. But despite the often humorous complications, a family vacation is also an earnest escape from ordinary life and all its relentless demands. Many families do not retreat to luxurious resorts and tropical getaways, but instead go to city parks, public beaches, or even their own backyards to find relief and relaxation. Justin Kimball chronicles in Where We Find Ourselves this poignant slice of American life, capturing the gritty outdoor environments where ordinary people take vacations and the complex interactions that occur there.
Scott Fortino, author of Institutional, appeared on Chicago Public Radio on January 30th. Speaking from Walter Payton College Prep, the photographer and Chicago policeman describes what drew him to the jails, hospitals, and schools he captured on film. Fortino describes his modes of expression, emphasizing the "personalization of the impersonal" in the spaces he photographs. The images of the unoccupied, but resonant spaces allow viewers to associate, fill in the gaps, and make connections.
Listen to Scott Fortino on Eight Forty-Eight
Learn more about Institutional
