What's Coming
What's coming up in the next few months:
The show at 555 Gallery in Boston called "Pairings" continues. For more information go here.
I am honored to have several of my pieces in the show. If you never got to see any of my work from Iceland made in 2013 this is a good opportunity as two of the large photographs called " Rock" are on view:
The gallery also has the full "Rock" portfolio in their flat files. Just ask to see the work.
On April 6 a new show at the Boston Athenaeum will open that will highlight works from recent acquisitions called: Works on Paper. It is open from April 6-September 3, 2017. Several years ago the museum purchased my series of "Peddocks Island" for their collection. The show will feature some of those photographs. For more information go here.
Peddocks Island ©Neal Rantoul 2005
On April 13 I will speak on my photography for the Griffin Museum in Winchester. This lecture comes from a talk I gave for the Westchester Photographic Society in December called "Series Work". Here is the description:
As photographers we all work in series in some form or another. After all, assembling a group of pictures into a portfolio from a trip or that have the same subject can be called a series. But to turn series work into something meaningful and a significant art form takes a different approach. One of Neal Rantoul’s characteristics as a career artist is to take the everyday and raise it to a far higher level. He has worked serially his whole career, forming narratives that deepen the meaning of his photographs and extend our understanding of a place, a circumstance or a mindset. In this lecture and visual presentation, Rantoul will share several of his own series as clarification of the larger issue
of just how we can elevate our photographs from the mundane to the sublime.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I have been making photographs in series since 1981. I am looking forward to sharing this way of working and hope you join me at the Griffin for what will be a special evening. Runs from 7-9 pm.
Here is the link: http://griffinmuseum.org/event/neal-rantoul-series-work/
Finally, on April 15 from 2-5pm I will be at 555 Gallery in Boston to show several portfolios. This is an excellent opportunity to look at work with me and to ask questions. Among others I will be showing these portfolios: Rock (from Iceland), Kudzu, Salt Lake, Forti di Marmi and the exhibition proposal called ReRealization.
Update: If you've been following my posts this past winter you know I've been hard at work on a new series called "Shrink Wrapped". I am planning on showing this new work on the 15th.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Related series
Oakesdale, Washington 1997
Made in 1997 while in Eastern Washington in the earlier years of shooting the Wheat country called "The Palouse" in the 8 x 10 inch format. This series was made hand held with a Super Wide Hasselblad camera as a result of believing that I should loosen up the structure of the series work I had been making until then. My interest had been mostly in urban places( Nantucket, Yountville, etc.) comparing newer areas to those that had been made more individualized by owners over a longer period of time. The Oakesdale Cemetery sits on a hill surrounded by the wheat fields I had been photograping and is a far more emotional response to a place. My good friend Robert Gooblar was very sick and would die the following year. He was very much on my mind as I walked around this utopia of a cemetery on a hill on a hot mid afternoon day in July.
The Oakesdale series has been shown and published many times now but the original sixteen prints were made conventionally in a darkroom, are selenium toned and are about 12 inches square.
Hershey, PA 1997
The Hershey pictures were made at a time when I was expanding my understanding of what was possible within a series project. I had made the Portland, Maine series earlier in the year and the Oakesdale, Washington series the previous summer. This was a farm that looked abandoned, off the side of the road on the way out of Hershey on another spring break trip to photograph, heading back home to Boston with a friend. We stopped and photographed for a while. It was cold and gray as much of March is.
Yountville, CA 1981
After making the Nantucket pictures the year before, I tried to make several other series but was having little luck. On a spring break trip to California my soon-to-be wife and I were staying at an inn in Napa Valley in the town of Yountville. Getting up early the next morning, I started walking through the side streets of the little town.
The light was soft, gray and a little foggy and I made this series. Of course, after this I assumed that the light would have to be gray from that point on in making work this way. It wasn’t until 1996 with the Portland, Maine series that I proved my original theory wrong.
