Trees: an exhibition at A Smith Gallery in Texas

Cultivar, from the Synecdoche Series

My image above is included in an exhibition entitled "Trees" at the A Smith Gallery in Johnson City, TX. The juror was a renowned photographer and one I've long admired: Michael Kenna.

Exhibition dates | December 16, 2016 to January 28, 2017

You can see more images from "Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole" on my website.

Artists talk about Chicago Project on Edelman Gallery website

I brought my two prints home from recently from The Chicago Project V exhibit that has been on display at the Catherine Edelman Gallery since early July. However, the exhibit lives on in the words of the artists (including mine) on the gallery website. Each of the nine artists included in the exhibit were interviewed for a feature called Artist Talk.

The purpose of Artist Talk, according to the website, is to further the understanding of "the creative process through the words of the photographer. We hope collectors, curators and the general public will gain a better understanding about each piece on exhibit and the artist in general."

Before the interview we were prepped to include some biographical information, who influenced our work and/or other photographers we admire, and then to describe the prints on display in some detail. If you listen to my video you will note that I adhere pretty much to this pattern. The two prints that represent me in the exhibit are from my Synecdoche Series (and, yes, I explain that odd term in the video!) You can hear just my interview, or any of the other individual photographers, by clicking here and then clicking on the small video link to the right of my name under my two prints.

To listen to all of the interviews in a sequence, you can click here and then click on the link to "The Chicago Project V," (which is currently right on top.)

To read my previous post about the The Chicago Project V exhibit, click here.

My Synecdoche Series has been complete enough to have been exhibited twice now in solo shows. However, wherever I travel I continue to find subjects that are consistent with its theme of symbolizing the fragments of nature that represent the whole. Sometimes they even push the concept in a new direction. I recently returned from a vacation trip to Cape Ann, north of Boston. A familiar landmark there is the twin lighthouses on Thatcher Island, the kind of place where our species has been testing its relationship with the natural world for a very long time.

Fortuitously, I was there when the moon was full.

You can also see more from the Synecdoche Series on my website.

Hard Ecology: a photo exhibit opening in July

I will have a solo show at the Tamarack Studio & Gallery in Madison, WI during July/August, 2013:

 

Hard Ecology: Rethinking Nature in an Abstract Landscape

Tamarack Studio & Gallery is at 849 E. Washington Avenue, Suite 102, in Madison. (Corner of E. Washington and Paterson.)

Opening reception Friday, July 19 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.

This exhibit features an updated selection from my Synecdoche Series plus two 8-foot long murals. Morning Light (Menomonee Valley), below, is one of those.

Synecdoche refers to a literary device in which the part represents the whole. My work uses the concept as a metaphor; the images are visual examples of synecdoche. My subject is the complex—often paradoxical—relationships I see between nature and architecture/human culture. My approach, using the part to represent the whole, is to symbolize the fragmentation we experience in our everyday environment. 

The title of the exhibit, Hard Ecology: Rethinking Nature in an Abstract Landscape, comes from the title of my latest book, which is both a selection from the larger Synecdoche Series and a fine art book in prototype form. The book design is carefully sequenced and the image plates are complemented with graphics and text that are intended to expand on the metaphorical character and content of the images. The book is available to preview and purchase at MagCloud.

The following is excerpted from the text of the book:

We are in a time of reckoning. Understanding our place in the world that we have wrought will be a hard lesson in ecology. We have tamed the wilderness, shaped nature, tried to design it into submission. Nature has been transformed, reduced, and abstracted. Nature is increasingly compromised or redeemed by our own actions. But nature is not—never has been—separate from us, from what is human. We have always been part of nature, inseparable except in our own minds.

Ecology is the study of relationships in the natural world. There can be no complete understanding of ecology without knowing where the human fits into the web of life.

To see more images from the Synecdoche Series, go to my website.

Hard Ecology: A new book in more ways than one!

Hard Ecology: Rethinking Nature in an Abstract Landscape represents a new direction for me as far as book design goes. Up to now I've been happy with the books I've done before. These include two fairly traditional books, which include a significant amount of text, as well as several photographic monographs. All of these can be seen on my website. 

Hard Ecology differs because I conceived it as a Fine Art Book. While the themes follow directly from work I've been doing for many years, the book design is a deliberate departure from the earlier books. The new book is now available to preview in its entirety with no obligation to purchase at MagCloud.com.

The following is my introduction (which actually appears at the end of the book.) 

Ours is a time of reckoning. Depending upon your point of view, we have either reached the “end of nature” or we are on the cusp of a new nature, one that reflects our own agency—for good or ill. Once we inhabited nature. Paradoxically, it also inhabited us. But we were always a little uncomfortable wearing nature on the inside—as if it were a disease. Exterior nature we pummeled and paved. We built our palaces on top of it and excreted our effluents into its veins. Our interior natures we psychoanalyzed and medicated. We molded our physical natures with fitness regimens, dietary supplements, liposuction and Botox. We believed all along in our dominion over nature. Some still believe. Solutions to climate change, overpopulation, mass extinction, and other seemingly intractable problems—they claim—are at hand. Salvation will come in the form of genetic modification, nanotechnology, renewable energy…

Emerson (1836): Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man.

McKibben (1989): Since nothing on earth remains unchanged by man, we are at the “end of nature.”

It is a time of reckoning. Understanding our place in the world that we have wrought will be a hard lesson in ecology. We have tamed the wilderness, shaped nature, tried to design it into submission. Nature has been transformed, reduced, and abstracted. Nature is increasingly compromised or redeemed by our own actions. But nature is not—never has been—separate from us, from what is human. We have always been part of nature, inseparable except in our own minds.

Ecology is the study of relationships in the natural world. There can be no complete understanding of ecology without knowing where the human fits into the web of life.

Hard Ecology: Rethinking Nature in an Abstract Landscape is a photo essay that establishes a narrative with no real beginning or end. Instead it poses a closed loop, a sequence of interrelated images derived from an abstract landscape. The locations of the images are identified, but they are irrelevant. They range from the sublime to the banal, from distant places to my home neighborhood. Individually, these photographs are metaphors. They are visual examples of synecdoche, the literary form in which the part represents the whole. They symbolize both the fragmentation we experience in our everyday environment and cultural strategies for reassimilating with nature. Collectively, they create visual and conceptual relationships that are meant to stimulate new understandings about the meaning of nature and our place within it.

Again, if you wish to preview the book - or to order it - go to MagCloud.com.

What is Synecdoche? My photo exhibit at BBFA

Transmission

First, mark your calendar: my upcoming solo show, entitled Synecdoche: The Fragment that Represents the Whole, runs from March 15 - 30 at Blutstein Brondino Fine Art, which is in Suite 212 of the Marshall Building at 207 E. Buffalo St., Milwaukee, WI. (Gallery hours listed below.)

Second, mark your calendar again: the reception is on March 22, 5-8 pm.

So, with that out of the way, let's tackle this funny title: Synecdoche.

Synecdoche is a literary device in which the part represents the whole. ("All hands on deck!" refers to the whole sailor, not just the hands.) My images are meant to be visual examples of synecdoche, which I use metaphorically. My subjects are the complex and often paradoxical relationships that I perceive between nature and architecture, or natural and human features in the landscape. My approach, using the part to represent the whole, symbolizes the fragmentation we experience in our everyday environment.

Live Oaks

How do we reconstruct a definition of nature at a time when our traditional understanding has eroded and nature seems increasingly reduced, manufactured and abstracted? How does being human relate to our notions about nature? These are not landscapes in the usual sense, but symbols of how we construct meaning and interpret our place in a fast-changing world.

For additional examples from my Synecdoche Series check out my website.

Gallery hours: Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., and by appointment.
 

Announcing: new website and book

I invite you to visit my newly designed, sleeker website ("powered by Livebooks") at www.eddeedaniel.com. The new design is intended to emphasize my Fine Art Photography.

My old website remains as urbanwilderness.net. I've kept it because it contains much more detailed information not only about my ongoing Urban Wilderness Project activities and portfolios, but also about Nicaragua and other projects.

I also want to announce my newest book, Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole, which is available from Magcloud.com.

The title, Synecdoche, is a literary device in which the part represents the whole. The photographs in the book are meant to be visual examples of synecdoche. My subjects are the complex, often paradoxical, relationships I see between nature and human civilization. My approach symbolizes the fragmentation we experience all around us.

I am interested in how we perceive nature and its relationship with human impacts upon the land. I focus on how we use natural features in manufactured landscapes to compensate for cultural alienation from nature. Alienation from the natural world creates psychological tension, whether conscious or not. We cope with this tension through symbols of nature: parks, lawns, trees, etc. In my view, these fragments do not simply represent nature; they are the parts that embody the whole.

Synecdoche: the fragment that represents the whole is a second volume from the Synecdoche Series. Both have the same conceptual basis. The images in this newer volume tend to be more refined and abstract than in the earlier volume. Both can be previewed in their entirety online.

And if you're interested, Magcloud is even having a fall sale, going on right now. What a deal!

The Commons III, from Synecdoche