Contemporary Photography and the Garden : Deceits and Fantasies
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
For centuries, gardens have inspired artists. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, photographers ranging from Eugène Atget to Edward Steichen were drawn to their beauty and rich metaphorical associations. This book looks at a group of artists who, beginning in the mid-1980s, turned to gardens as a subject for their photography. The extraordinary and diverse work shown here demonstrates a wide range of artistic response-from reflecting upon the garden as a site of lyrical beauty and luxuriant atmosphere to drawing upon it as a dark visual metaphor for the manipulation of nature.
Contemporary Photography and the Garden-Deceits and Fantasies, which accompanies a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts, presents the remarkably wide-ranging work of an international group of contemporary artists: Sally Apfelbaum, Daniel Boudinet, Gregory Crewdson, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Sally Gall, Lynn Geesaman, Linda Hackett, Geoffrey James, Len Jenshel, Erica Lennard, Sally Mann, Catherine Opie, Jack Pierson, Marc Quinn, and Jean Rault. Depicting gardens in Japan, India, Europe, Great Britain, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, their work investigates the forms, atmosphere, and symbolism of the garden. Essays by Thomas Padon, Robert Harrison, Ronald Jones, and Shirin Neshat examine the garden as a subject in contemporary photography and as a signifier in cultural and religious history.
About the Author
Thomas Padon is a Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs at the American Federation of Arts, where he has organized many major exhibitions, among them, Eternal Egypt: Masterpieces of Ancient Art from The British Museum; Degas and the Dance; and Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective. He was also the curator of the touring exhibition Nancy Graves: Excavations in Print (1966), for which he wrote the accompanying catalogue raisonné, and Shadows in the Floating World: Silhouette in Ukiyo-e Prints (1990) presented at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Robert Harrison is Professor and Chair of the Department of French and Italian at Stanford University. He is the author of several books, among them, Forests: A Shadow of Civilization (1992) and The Dominion of the Dead (2003).
Ronald Jones is an artist, critic, cofounder of o-b-o-k (an office for experience design in Stockholm), and faculty member at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt, and at Konstfack, in Stockholm.
Shirin Neshat is a New York-based artist whose photographs and videos have been included in exhibitions and biennial shows around the world.
Contemporary Photography and the Garden: Deceits and Fantasies,Thomas Padon,Harry N Abrams,0810949555,Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions,Exhibitions,Garden Design,Gardening,Gardening/Plants,Gardens in art,Photography,Photography of gardens,Subjects & Themes - Plants & Animals,Gardening / Garden Design
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