Steve Fitch

USA
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Western Landmarks

Steve Fitch: AA Motel, Holdrege, Nebraska, May 22, 1981

Steve Fitch: El Rancho Drive-in theater, Dalhart, Texas, January 9, 1981

Steve Fitch: et Drive-in Theater, Tularosa, New Mexico, January 8, 1983

Steve Fitch: La Mesita Motel, Mesa, Arizona, December 28, 1980

Steve Fitch: Starlite Motel, Mesa, Arizona, December 28, 1980

Steve Fitch: Three highways between Mexican Hat and Bluff, Utah, June 18, 1983

Steve Fitch: Villa Motel, Albquerque, New Mexico, February 21, 1980

Steve Fitch: Plywood sign near Presidio, TX, March 2, 2006

Steve Fitch: Plywood sign south of Cortez, CO, July 21, 2007

Steve Fitch: Paragon Motel, Denver Colorado, 1979

Steve Fitch: Guest Motel, Norton, KS. 1982

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Steve Fitch Bio

Awards
1999	Eliot Porter Fellowship, New Mexico Council for Photography

1985	Purchase Award, Southwest '85, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe

1984	Purchase Award, Current Works 1984, Society for Contemporary Photography at the Morgan Gallery, Kansas City, MO

1984	Purcahse Award, Arts 84, Boulder Center for the Visual Arts, Boulder, CO

1981	National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship: Marks and Measures

1975	Purchase Award, 1975 Invitational, Andromeda Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1975	National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography

1973	National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography

1973	Purchase Award, Emulsion 73, Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA

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Solo Exhibitions
Vari	Gone: Photographs of Abondonment on the High Plains, Traveling Exhibition, Various

Vari	Red Desert, Green Prairie, Blue Sky: Photographing the West, Traveling, Various

2017	Steve Fitch: Western Landmarks and American Motel Signs, Galerie Wouter van Leeuwen, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2016	American Motel Signs, photo-eye Bookstore Project Space, Santa Fe, NM

2016	Steve Fitch: Western Landmarks, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia

2015	The Road, Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2012	Steve Fitch: Western Landmarks and Diesels and Dinosaurs, Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2012	Highway Culture, photo-eye, Santa Fe, NM

2011	Steve Fitch, 1970 to 2010, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2011	Motels and Motion on the Mother Road: New Mexico, Governor's Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2011	American Landscapes: Contemporary Photographs of the West, Joslyn Art Museums, Omaha, NE

2009	Endangered Culture, photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

2009	Inaugural Photography Exhibition in the New Modern Wing, Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL

2008	Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe, Palace of the Governers, Santa Fe, NM

2006	Making Panhandle Pictures, Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX

2006	Llano Estacado: Island in the Sky, Houston Cetnter for Photography, Houston, TX

2006	Silver, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX

2005	Syatt Regency Hotel, Denver, CO

2005	Boxed Sets: Portfolios of the Seventies, Center for Creative Photogtaphy, Tucson, AZ

2005	Sign Language, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2005	Spectacle and Society, Governor's Gallery, State Capitol Building, Santa Fe, NM

2004	Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

2004	Art, Culture, Place: Visual Traditions of the Southwest, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuqurque, NM

2004	Pretty as a Picture, Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL

2004	Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains, Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, OR

2003	The New World's Old World: Photographic Views of Ancient America, AXA Gallery, New York, NY

2003	Steve Fitch: Gone: Photographs of the Abondonment on the HIgh Plains, Paul Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2003	Maker's Marks in the Landscape, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX

2002	Visions from America: Photographs from the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940 to 2001, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

2002	The Artist and the American West, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX

2001	Shifting Landscapes, Landmark Gallery, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

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Group Exhibitions
2014	Edward Hopper and Photography, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, NY

2014	Modern Times: Photography in the 20th Century, Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2013	Framing the Photograph: Photographic Terrain in the collection of the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Catherine Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, MN

2013	Landscapes in Passing: Steve Fitch, Robert Flick, Elaine Mayes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

2012	Alcove 12.2, New Mexico Art Museum, Santa Fe, NM

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Collections

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

The Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, IL

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

Nicolaysen Museum, Casper, WY

Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO

Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH

Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Grunweld Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, VA

Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Sheldon Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincon, NE

New York Public Library, New York, NY

Spencer Art Museum, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

California Museum of Photography, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA

Dever Art Museum, Denver, CO

Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA

New Mexico Museum of Arts, Santa Fe, NM

Australian National Gallery, Australia

Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX

Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Museum of International Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Houston Museum of Finart Art, Houston, TX

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Bibliography

American Motel Signs: 1980–2008. Steve Fitch. The Velvet Cell, London, 2016 (photo-eye Cat# ZH054)

Motel Signs. Steve Fitch. Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2011 (photo-eye Cat# TR370)

Llano Estacado: Island in the Sky. Steve Fitch. Texas Tech University Press, 2011 (photo-eye Cat# ZE965)

Gone: Photographs of Abondonment on the High Plains. Steve Fitch. University of New Mexico, 2003 (photo-eye Cat# NM168)

Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art. Steve Fitch. University of New Mexico, 1988 (photo-eye Cat# NM035)

Diesels and Dinosaurs. Steve Fitch. Long Run Press, Berkeley, 1976 (photo-eye Cat# CS002)

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Education
1977	San Francisco Art Insitute, Masters Program in Photography

1971	University of California at Berkeley, Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology

1978	University of New Mexico, Master of Arts in Photography

Steve Fitch Statement

Artist Statement
After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1971 with a bachelors degree in anthropology, and while teaching photography at the ASUC Studio on the Berkeley campus, I began work on a project photographing the vernacular roadside of the American highway. I received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships to aid in the completion of this project, one in 1973 and the second in 1975. Eventually, the photographs were published in the monograph, Diesels and Dinosaurs, in 1976.

After receiving a masters degree in fine arts from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1978 I accepted a teaching position at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1981, as a member of the "Marks and Measures" project, I began photographing prehistoric Native American pictograph and petroglyph sites in the American west. This project was partly funded by the last National Endowment for the Arts Survey Grant awarded in 1981. My work on the project, along with that of the other four project members, was published in a monograph, Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art, by the University of New Mexico Press in 1988. I received several purchase awards in various exhibitions for photographs made during this period.

Partly as a result of the work I did for Diesels and Dinosaurs, I became interested in the artistic possibilities of neon and learned to fabricate my own neon pieces in 1981. I have made a number of neon installations over the past thirty years, several of which are permanently located in outdoor locations in New Mexico.

In 1990, after teaching at Princeton University for four years in the Visual Arts Program, I returned to New Mexico and began photographing the ongoing abandonment of the high Great Plains receiving the Eliot Porter Fellowship from the New Mexico Council for Photography in 1999 to aid in the completion of this project. In 2003 a book of these photographs entitled Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains was published by the University of New Mexico Press and a traveling exhibition of the photographs was organized by University of New Mexico Art Museum. The entire exhibition of forty photographs was purchased by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. Since 1990 I have taught photography at the College of Santa Fe.

Today, my wife and I live off the grid in a passive solar adobe house we constructed ourselves over six summers, beginning in 1984, on rural land in Santa Fe County, New Mexico. We use photovoltaic panels to meet all of our electricity needs and collect water in an extensive rainwater gathering system. Recently, I finished a project photographing in the Llano Estacado region of western Texas and eastern New Mexico. My work on the project, as well as that of five other photographers, was partly funded by a grant from the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University and will be published in an upcoming monograph by Texas Tech University Press.

Steve Fitch Books
Available from photo-eye

Featured in:

American Motel Signs: 1980–2008. Steve Fitch. The Velvet Cell, London, 2016 (photo-eye Cat# ZH054)

Motel Signs. Steve Fitch. Nazraeli Press, Portland, 2011 (photo-eye Cat# TR370)

Llano Estacado: Island in the Sky. Steve Fitch. Texas Tech University Press, 2011 (photo-eye Cat# ZE965)

Gone: Photographs of Abondonment on the High Plains. Steve Fitch. University of New Mexico, 2003 (photo-eye Cat# NM168)

Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art. Steve Fitch. University of New Mexico, 1988 (photo-eye Cat# NM035)

Diesels and Dinosaurs. Steve Fitch. Long Run Press, Berkeley, 1976 (photo-eye Cat# CS002)