Coming up for Air
In the last couple of posts I've referenced work done earlier this summer of wheat fields in SE Washington. Two portfolios of those are now up on the site:
I served on a panel discussion this past week at the Griffin Museum with several gallery owners. We were discussing portfolio reviews, galleries and how to prepare to present one's work. Paula Tognarelli, the director of the Griffin mc'd the event and spoke at one point about how landscape photographs were often regarded by portfolio reviewers as being at the bottom of a long list of "desirables" by reviewers, portraits being another. The full two hour panel discussion was taped and is on You Tube:
I understand. Add to this resounding negative the fact that the Palouse, where I have photographed for 20 years, has become a definite go to area for many photographers and workshops and you have a location with resulting imagery that is "beauty with trouble". Cliché, redundant, overworked and boring. Oh man, what is an artist to do?
This does not negate the fact that the Palouse is ground zero for a course in advanced image making for me, and sits as the core of this photographer's aesthetic.
The prints are 22 z 17 inches and may be seen by contacting Susan Nalband at the 555 Gallery in Boston.
I wish you well.
Related series
Wheat 2014 Function
Artist Statement: Wheat
Neal Rantoul
I first started photographing in the Palouse area of southeastern Washington in the mid 90’s and have been back most years since. It is my longest running project.
The work has evolved over the years, going from first black and white to color, from large format to digital, and from being based on the ground to including pictures made from the air. I have also photographed the area through the seasons.
In earlier writing about the project I referenced some of the great contemporary landscape photographers such as Robert Adams and Joe Deal, who was a good friend, and also cited Eugene Atget for the single mindedness of his intent. As a career artist I work in many different genres but this is the one that is perhaps the core vehicle of expression for my landscape work. While it has been challenging to find new approaches to this most wonderful of places, it also has been a privilege. Looking back at so much work now, I see more subtle changes from the earlier days to the present for I believe some of the basic principles in working there still apply: it is a landscape almost without scale due to few trees and little to reference size, the pictures can convey the movement of the wheat in the breeze at the same time as show the stillness and static nature of the topography, allowing photographs that convey sharpness and blur due to movement in the same image simultaneously and finally, in the more recent work since about 2000, colors, on their own, but also in relationship to each other.
I am very excited by the newest aerial work from the summer of 2014, as it represents a shift in intention with an evolved sense of the fields' function and their form where the work is perhaps its most abstract. Some of this work references the place by including a barn, a farm machine or trees, while some does not. Hence: Function and Form, the title for the new work. Function and Form constitutes a subset, which is, I hope, a powerful one, of the overall work made over the two-week shoot.
Neal Rantoul
July 2014
Wheat 2014 Form
Artist Statement: Wheat
Neal Rantoul
I first started photographing in the Palouse area of southeastern Washington in the mid 90’s and have been back most years since. It is my longest running project.
The work has evolved over the years, going from first black and white to color, from large format to digital, and from being based on the ground to including pictures made from the air. I have also photographed the area through the seasons.
In earlier writing about the project I referenced some of the great contemporary landscape photographers such as Robert Adams and Joe Deal, who was a good friend, and also cited Eugene Atget for the single mindedness of his intent. As a career artist I work in many different genres but this is the one that is perhaps the core vehicle of expression for my landscape work. While it has been challenging to find new approaches to this most wonderful of places, it also has been a privilege. Looking back at so much work now, I see more subtle changes from the earlier days to the present for I believe some of the basic principles in working there still apply: it is a landscape almost without scale due to few trees and little to reference size, the pictures can convey the movement of the wheat in the breeze at the same time as show the stillness and static nature of the topography, allowing photographs that convey sharpness and blur due to movement in the same image simultaneously and finally, in the more recent work since about 2000, colors, on their own, but also in relationship to each other.
I am very excited by the newest work from the summer of 2014, as it represents a shift in intention with an evolved sense of the fields' function and their form where the work is perhaps its most abstract. Some of this work references the place by including a barn, a farm machine or trees, while some does not. Hence: Function and Form, the title for the new work. Function and Form constitutes a subset, which is, I hope, a powerful one, of the overall work made over the two-week shoot.
Neal Rantoul
July 2014
Bethel Cemetery, Steptoe, WA 2014
Bethel Cemetery is on a hill overlooking the very small settlement called Steptoe in rural Washington south of Spokane off of RT 95.
I made these photographs in 2014
The prints are on 22 x 17 inch paper and may be seen by contacting Insight Arts Management(IAM) at:
m.rantoul@gmail.com
