|
William Christenberry.
Photographs by William Christenberry. Essays by Elizabeth Broun, Howard N. Fox, Andy Grundberg and Walter Hopps.
Aperture,
New Yor,
2006.
204 pp.,
160 color illustrations,
12¼x10¼".
Publisher's Description
Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity
of the American South through his work in Hale County, Alabama, where he
was raised. Although he is most often associated with—and recognized as
a pioneer in—American color photography, he also works in an unorthodox
mix of media that includes sculpture, drawing, painting and found-object
assemblage. This comprehensive survey of his work considers all those
practices together, and in doing so gives readers access to the full scope and
complexity of his vision. In every medium, Christenberry’s theme is unified: the
history, the story of place, is at the heart of his project. His poetic documentation
of vernacular architecture, signage and landscape captures moments of
quiet beauty in a sometimes mythic terrain that, with its worn iconography
and buildings turned ramshackle, evokes the form and power of the passage
of time. Since relocating to Washington, D.C., in 1968, Christenberry has
dutifully returned to photograph the same locations annually—the green
barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn—fulfilling a personal ritual and
documenting the physical changes wrought by the passing of a year. More
than half the photographs in this comprehensive survey are previously
unpublished, including new and vintage images and a stunning selection of
never-before-seen Kodachrome work. An essay by Walter Hopps, the artist’s
lifelong friend and the founding director of the Menil Collection, who passed
away in 2005, will draw attention as well.
|
back