Christoph Gielen has a unique perspective—literally—on the sprawl that has taken over so much of the American built landscape since the 1960s. As someone who has spent a lot of time in helicopters, looking down on the eerily perfect geometries of the nation’s suburbs, the German artist knows just how artificial, and unsustainable, these communities really are. With his Arcadia series, a portion of which we’re featuring here, Gielen hopes to spur viewers to think about the consequences of what they’re seeing (and, perhaps, where they live). “With these pictures, I am interested in exploring the intersection of art and environmental politics,” Gielen says. “I hope to trigger a reevaluation of our built environment and the methods of its development, to ask: What can be considered a viable, ecologically sound growth process?” Click here to launch a slide show of Gielen’s photographs.

This fall, Aperture has released three photography books that, each in its own way, talk about development, the environment, and the human relationship to the landscape. This last point in particular—the way the landscape is both affected and perceived by human beings—struck me as the connecting thread among three otherwise quite different books. While each body of work tells a different story, they all made me think about my own environment, both local and global.
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In Sawdust Mountain, Eirik Johnson presents us with the familiar struggle between humans and the natural environment upon which they depend. His subject is the logging and salmon fishing industries of the Pacific Northwest, and the way these industries must adapt as the landscape changes. The photographs refer clearly to the history of landscape photography—calling to mind, particularly, early American photographs of the West by such greats as Carleton Watkins and William Henry Jackson. But Johnson does not herald triumph in his images; rather, his pictures are quiet—nearly silent, in fact—and his palette is dominated by the subdued, rain-washed blues and greens of the Pacific Northwest. Here, the sun never blinds us, but rather appears as through gauze. These muted hues complement the subject matter—the industries and the towns that serve them are in transition as the old-growth trees and wild salmon grow more and more scarce. Read more…

Last weekend was a busy one in many corners of New York City—and not only because of ICFF. Across the East River, amid the charming cobblestone streets, glittering condos, and repurposed warehouses of DUMBO, the second New York Photo Festival was also taking place. I saw a lot of great work there, but three European photographers from William A. Ewing’s show, All over the place!, stood out as worthy of mention. Read more…