Exhibition dates: 5th November – 13th December, 2019
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Wave, Lave, Lace, Pescadero Beach, California
1978
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
I like these photographs, I like them a lot.
Unlike most conceptual art where you have to read a heavy tome of text to understand, actually, the work is about very little and means even less – here, there is humour, wit, intelligence and insight into the condition of our existence on this earth.
Using the optics of the large format camera to enhance perspective, Pfahl projects (his) music into the cosmos. The mark making is lightly made on the landscape, as in Triangle, Bermuda or Australian Pines, Fort DeSoto, Florida. Imagine having the impulse, the creativity, to make that gesture, to wrap silver foil around the trees in the latter image at just that height. A brilliant intervention into the “natural” (i.e. constructed) scene. Often used in his photographs is the Sowilō or the s-rune, the runic symbol ϟ meaning “sun”.
In 1981, Peter C. Bunnell observes in his Introduction to James Alinder’s book Altered Landscapes: The Photographs of John Pfahl, “Our momentary, fragmented and captured vision of disorder and emotion has been replaced by a cool rendering of purposefulness as if to accord another dimension of positivism to the moving force of contemporary human awareness. Pfahl’s work is an attack on the problems of space and, ultimately, existence from a rational point of view.”
Forty years later, these photographs seem not so much rational, or picturesque, as spiritual. The human construction touches the earth lightly, almost reverentially. As Pfahl notes, utmost care is taken not to alter the actual subject in a way he would consider harmful to his positivist respect for nature. In this delicate footprint, these photographs are very prescient of the dangers of our own Anthropocene – of climate change, of raging bushfires, drought, flood and bio-exinction. We are literally destroying this planet and its creatures. Bunnell states, “Pfahl’s imagery is a sure manifestation of the belief that society can produce an art suitable to its nature and, in this case, a specific kind of photographic presence that expresses current societal values.”
Unfortunately, it’s all too late. The lesson has not been learned.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs and the text (reproduced with permission) in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Moonrise over Pie Pan, Capitol Reef National Park
1977
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Haystack Cone, Freeport, Maine
1976
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Pink Rock Rectangle, Lewiston, New York
1975
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Triangle, Bermuda
1975
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Australian Pines, Fort DeSoto, Florida
1977
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming solo exhibition, John Pfahl Altered Landscapes. The exhibition will open November 5th and continue thru December 13th, 2019. A reception is scheduled for November 23rd, from 5-8 pm. The exhibition will present a selection of vintage dye transfer colour photographs that the artist printed in the late 1970s, as well as larger archival pigment prints of the series most celebrated images.
In his series Altered Landscapes, Pfahl physically changes the environment, fabricating the view to question our perception of the landscape through added elements that reference mark-making devices associated with photographs, maps, plans, and diagrams. These gestures sometimes repeat strong formal components; fill in information suggested by the scene, or act upon information external to the photograph itself. The picturesque scenes are at once interrupted and completed by the artist’s involvement in creating the photograph.
John Pfahl was born in 1939 in New York, New York and raised in New Jersey. He studied art at Syracuse University, receiving a B.F.A. in 1961 and a M.A. from the School of Communications of the same university in 1968. His position in photography has been one of both a celebrated artist and an important educator. Pfahl taught photography for over decade at the Rochester Institute of Technology, educating many now important contemporary photographers and has served as a longtime adjunct professor in the Visual Studies department of the University of Buffalo. In 2009, he was the Honored Educator of the Year by the Society for Photographic Education. Other honours include two National Endowment for the Arts, Photographer’s Fellowships.
His work is in numerous prominent collections, including: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, George Eastman House, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Modern Art, Center for Creative Photography, Princeton University Art Museum, among others.
Monographs on Pfahls’s work include Altered Landscapes: The Photographs of John Pfahl (Friends of Photography 1982), Picture Windows (New York Graphic Society 1987), A Distanced Land (UNM/Albright-Knox Gallery 1990), Permutations on the Picturesque (Lightwork 1997) and Waterfall (Nazraeli Press 2000), and Extreme Horticulture (Verlag 2003).
Press release from the Joseph Bellows Gallery [Online] Cited 09/11/2019
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Slanting Forest, Lewiston, New York
1975
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Live Oak Lightning, Lompoc, California
1978
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Tracks, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah
1977
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Monument Valley with Red String, Monument Valley, Utah
1977
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
Introduction
Peter C. Bunnell
Peter C. Bunnell. “Introduction,” from James Alinder (ed.,). Altered Landscapes: The Photographs of John Pfahl (Untitled Series, No. 26). Friends of Photography / Robert Freidus Gallery, June 1, 1981
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Six Oranges, Buffalo, New York
1975
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Red Setters in Red Field, Charlotte, North Carolina
1976
Vintage dye transfer print
7 3/4 x 10 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Roan Mounting Lightning, Roan Mountain, North Carolina
1977
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Blue Right Angle, Buffalo, New York
1978
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Tree and Mountain Cleft, Boulder, Colorado
1977
Archival pigment print
16 x 20 inches
John Pfahl (American, 1939-2020)
Canyon Point, Zion Canyon National Park, Utah
1977
Archival pigment print
20 x 16 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment
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