- Hardcover: 128 pages
- Publisher: YU Art Gallery; 1st Edition edition (April 10 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0300093616
- ISBN-13: 978-0300093612
- Product Dimensions: 32.8 x 28.1 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.6 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #632,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Some of Emmet Gowin's black-and-white aerial photographs look almost like abstract expressionist paintings or etchings until captions like "Weapons Disposal Trenches," "Off-Road Traffic Pattern" and "Effluent Holding Pond" make clear the concrete implications of these weirdly beautiful formations. Changing the Earth, which accompanies the celebrated photographer's first traveling exhibition in ten years, documents man-made incursions in the natural landscape. The mostly aerial views show strip mines, power stations, munitions storage facilities and golf courses in the U.S., Czech Republic, Japan and Israel. Editor Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, offers an overview of Gowin's work and includes an interview with Gowin by Corcoran Gallery curator Philip Brookman and an essay by environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams (Red).
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Gowin's stunning aerial photographs of the earth, of landscapes gouged and poisoned by man in the service of war, mining, and agriculture, exist somewhere between color and black and white, the microscopic (many images look cellular) and the panoramic, the abstract and the undeniably real. These are bird's-eye views of rivers, deserts, mountains, and wheat fields, of Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, bomb disposal craters in Utah, a huge toxic water treatment facility in Arkansas, strip mines in the U.S and the Czech Republic, and a staggering series of the vast and haunted Nevada Test Site. Gowin bears witness to restricted and violated places unknown and unseen by most people, and he does so with such tender and loving attention to composition, detail, and tone the viewer feels as though he or she is looking at photographs of the scarred body of a loved one. An interview with the artist and essays by Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, and environmental activist Terry Tempest Williams affirm the lyrical beauty and sense of suffering and compassion that Gowin's unique and prayerful photographs evoke. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
the politics I could do without ...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)
The images in this superbly printed book which interest me are those which suggest 1) pictorial texture and 2) primitive art. I see a parallel between some of these images and several of Tapies paintings and some of the images of the walls of the Altamira pre-historic caves. I'm not terribly moved by images whose aim is to portray environmental devastation as in general I'm not interested in political representation of meaning in art.In general I'm solely interested in those photographic images which reveal something new. The subject matter doesn't matter at all. The texts that accompany this book are terribly political and almost chauvinistic. They attempt at forming a living icon. America is personality driven and practices the cult of personality. These texts are no exception. They attempt at telling the crowd that Emmet Gowin is a "great American artist". This is done with numerous references to other "icons" of American Art namely Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, the simplistic Harry Callahan, the politics of the US Congress, American intelligentsia such as the "philosophy" of Frederich Sommer, references to American depositories of culture such as the National Endowment of the Arts, Princeton University, The Rhode Island School of Art, etc, etc. ~In other cases these people refer to Kerouac, or the American Dream. This kind of nationalistic invocation is typical of American art discourses. Emmet serves the purpose and was delighted with the initiative. Had he not been these texts wouldn't have been printed and the book not published. It was published by another depository of American art - the University of Yale, the "famous" university that awarded a honorary degree to a liar, fraudster and killer - Bush Junior. Resuming: there are a few images in this book which are great images. But that's about it. When they begin to articulate art, vision, emotion with politics, especially American politics I take a long break from things American. You can only eat American for a given amount of time. So after this break let's get back to serious stuff please. We were discussing Bourdieu's concept of "cultural capital" ... Until next time!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Documenting Ruinous Relations With The Land,
By
This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)
Like a great deal of aerial photography (Bradford Washburn's naturalistic mountain work immediately comes to mind in this connection), Emmet Gowin's meticulously detailed portfolio depicting man's ambition writ large upon the surface of our planet can often be 'read' as much as abstract art as documentary record. As art, this series of images of a wounded planet is so deceptively compelling it is easy to become lost in the sensuousness of the aesthetic moment Gowin repeatedly creates and forget that the subject matter being systematically explored is intrinsically disturbing and of concern. Indeed, the experience of finding so much beauty in landscapes of man-made desolation and ruin is unnerving. Yet it is undeniable that from a distance the patterns on the Earth made by irrigation pivots, toxic chemical ponds, missile burial trenches, mining pits, and numerous other manifestations of human 'development' without limits are endlessly unique and dramatic. Paradoxically, it is precisely this nexus of visually stimulating, geometrically intricate imagery generated in the context of wanton exploitation and destruction of the land that sustains the narrative and aesthetic power of Changing The Earth. One is absorbed in the beauty of the photography just long enough to catch sight and become painfully aware of the pervasive, intensely consequential, problem that demands attention and thought. Thus lessons for the future abound in the pages of this volume! One day our way of taking the Earth for granted by first depleting its resources for immediate gain and then dumping what is no longer wanted or useful wherever is convenient, will be seen as the opulent conceit and obscene luxury that it surely is. Until that day, studies like Changing The Earth bare witness to our collective folly, greed and irresponsibility.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning beauty,
By Stuart Murdoch "everything in photography is ... (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth (Hardcover)
This book despite it's somewhat horrific subject matter has a beauty so deep and profound it restores my faith in interest in Black and White image making. Beautifully printed it is a book that any budding black and white landscape photographer should own.
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