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APERTURE
William Christenberry: Kodachromes
Text by Richard B. Woodward.
Although best known for his large-format color photographs made with vintage Kodak Brownie cameras, William Christenberry has also consistently produced work with 35 mm Kodachrome slide film since he took up photography. William Christenberry: Kodachromes is the first publication to showcase this stunning and previously unknown body of work, spanning from 1964 to 2007, of which only a small number of images have ever been published or exhibited. As in all of Christenberry's photographs, the subject matter is the rural Deep South: the twisting back roads, open landscapes, rusted signage and ramshackle vernacular architecture found in Hale County, Alabama. Though many of the sites pictured in this rare collection are new, other subjects have grown iconic in Christenberry's oeuvre as he has returned to photograph them over the decades--the red building in the forest, Sprott Church, the Palmist Sign and the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others. The photographs in William Christenberry: Kodachromes were made with a camera that allowed for greater mobility, revealing new ways of considering Christenberry's perennial subjects and offering further insight into the working method of this venerable artist. William Christenberry (born 1936) has been a professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C., since 1968. His work has been the subject of dozens of solo shows and exhibitions over the last 40 years, and can be found in numerous permanent collections, including those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson. His work was the subject of a major year-long solo exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2006.
"Get back at the shack"! Featured image is from William Christenberry: Kodachromes, published by Aperture.
FROM THE BOOK
"His mind was clear and open and unimbued with the deep-seated suspicion and hostility toward color photography harbored by many who had grown up seeing things in black-and-white. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, when an improved version of Kodachrome and the introduction of the SX-70 process gradually taught artists and magazine professionals to respect color as something more than a tawdry commercial gimmick, he was in a mood to try the products…The photographs he has taken since that time reflect this idiosyncratic and unphotographic background…They balance documentary realism with painterly abstraction and a minimalist’s concern for the dimensions and weight of individual objects, and they channel this array of qualities through autobiography…These are pictures about familiarity and separation, about being both near and far, deceiving us nor of much help in getting to the bottom of things, if there is a bottom to be found…The organic and the inorganic spectrum are in balance in his photographs. He finds no discord between the sun-baked landscape of God and the paint-flaked creations of man…On the other hand, with the omnivorous kudzu gradually swallowing up everything in its path, Christenberry has a hunch which side he believes will eventually win. When Kodak announced the phasing out of Kodachrome in June 2008, it was fitting for this artist, who has taken as one of his themes obsolescence and the certainty of decay."
Richard B.Woodward, excerpted from his text to Kodachromes.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.5 x 11.5 in. / 176 pgs / 115 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 ISBN: 9781597111478 PUBLISHER: Aperture AVAILABLE: 11/30/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not Available
Published by Aperture. Text by Richard B. Woodward.
Although best known for his large-format color photographs made with vintage Kodak Brownie cameras, William Christenberry has also consistently produced work with 35 mm Kodachrome slide film since he took up photography. William Christenberry: Kodachromes is the first publication to showcase this stunning and previously unknown body of work, spanning from 1964 to 2007, of which only a small number of images have ever been published or exhibited. As in all of Christenberry's photographs, the subject matter is the rural Deep South: the twisting back roads, open landscapes, rusted signage and ramshackle vernacular architecture found in Hale County, Alabama. Though many of the sites pictured in this rare collection are new, other subjects have grown iconic in Christenberry's oeuvre as he has returned to photograph them over the decades--the red building in the forest, Sprott Church, the Palmist Sign and the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others. The photographs in William Christenberry: Kodachromes were made with a camera that allowed for greater mobility, revealing new ways of considering Christenberry's perennial subjects and offering further insight into the working method of this venerable artist.
William Christenberry (born 1936) has been a professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C., since 1968. His work has been the subject of dozens of solo shows and exhibitions over the last 40 years, and can be found in numerous permanent collections, including those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson. His work was the subject of a major year-long solo exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2006.
