Artist Statement
The inspiration for the mainstream of my photographic activity comes from art made in mediums other than photography—especially late Modernists painters, Surrealists, Dada and conceptual artists—whose works have suggested possibilities for making photographs that come out of my experience of looking at and thinking about art. The course of such projects has been to make:
Photographs that look like art (a Pictorialist mode)
Photographs of art (fictional and documentary modes)
Photographs of things that look like art (a metaphoric mode)
Since my first encounter with the art of the late 1960s and early 70s at the old Pasadena Art Museum, I've wanted to apply what I could learn from looking at and thinking about art to my personal photographic projects. In 1976 I completed graduate studies at UCLA where I had worked with painters even though my medium was exclusively photography. I think of my studio photographs from the mid-70s through the early 80s as Pictorialist works. Like the Pictorialists, I modeled my photographs after paintings: in their case sentimental Impressionism; in my case Post-painterly Abstraction, Minimalist and Pop artworks. Projects viewable at www.landweber.com include: "Post Painterly Polaroids"; "Treasure Tones"; "Two Packs of Polaroid"; "Sweetstuff Candy Polaroids"; "Cherie Holding Colored Cards"; "American Cameras."
Working through several projects that were designed to get me out of the studio, I continued to think about the relationship of my photography to my experience of looking at art. The project I call “Field and Street—Color” was intended to help me see what I had learned from several years of working in the studio that I might apply to photographs made out in the world. I learned that I could make photographs of found subjects that offered me a similar experience to that of encountering an artwork. I now think of these field and street photographs as a prologue to my current project, “Things That Look Like Art.” Projects viewable at www.landweber.com: "The Road to Weed"; "Field and Street—Color"; "Slag, Smog, Stars and Snow."
After a hiatus, my enthusiasm for photography was restored by a combination of digital technology and wanting to photograph certain artworks. First was a digital collage project for which I placed Audubon's pre-photographic birds into my photographs of post-industrial architecture; then an art-historical documentary treatise about the network of connections among artists as defined through my photographs of artworks in which one artist refers to another. Viewable on my website: "Auduboniana"; "Artist to Artist."
My current work furthers and clarifies this investigation: “Things That Look Like Art” is a collection of observations of found artifacts, photographed in situ, addressing my perception about art and how it can be represented in a photograph. I want to suggest a certain purity of vision about art when an art-like experience is had when no acknowledged art is present. I intend this work to comment about art, vision and photography so as to initiate a conversation. It is also an invitation for others to engage in something similar—to make photographs that communicate a personal vision about art—so as to participate in a purely visual dialog.
Process Statement
Photographs are 18"x24" digital pigment prints.
Born 1943, Washington DC
Present residence: Berkeley CA
B.A., University of Iowa, 1966g
M.F.A., University of California at Los Angeles, 1976
One-Artist Exhibitions
• Steven Wolf Fine Art, San Francisco CA, 2011
• Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY, 1989
• University of Minnesota Art Museum, Minneapolis MN, 1988
• De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara CA, 1988
• B.C. Space, Laguna Beach CA, 1988
• O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York NY, 1988
• Photographic Archives, Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville, Louisville KY, 1987
• Madison Art Center, Madison WI, 1987
• Heron Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art, Indianapolis IN, 1987
• Lehigh University Art Galleries, Bethlehem PA, 1987
• Los Angeles Photographic Artists, Venice CA, 1984
Two-Artist Exhibitions
• Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica CA, Transformations with Robert Heinecken, 2011
• Jones-Troyer Gallery, Washington DC, 1987
• LOCUS Gallery, St. Louis MO, 1987
• Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego CA, 1985 (catalog)
• Susan Spiritus Gallery, Newport Beach CA, 1984
• University of Oklahoma Art Museum, Norman OK, 1981
• Cohen and Ziskin, Century City Offices, Los Angeles CA, 1980
Selected Publications
• Seismic Shift: Baltz, Deal and California Landscape Photography, 1944–1984, Colin Westerbeck, editor, catalog of the exhibition, 2011, Riverside: California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside
• Reality Revisited, Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection, Anna Tellgren, editor, catalog of the exhibition, 2010, Stockholm: Moderna Museet
• The Collectible Moment, Gloria Williams Sander, editor, catalog of the exhibition, 2006, Pasadena: Norton-Simon Art Museum
• Capturing Light: Masterpieces of California Photography 1850–2000, Drew Johnson, catalog of the exhibition, 2000, New York: W.W. Norton
• Blumenstücek Kunststücke, Herausgegeben von Hans-Michael Herzog, catalog of the exhibition, 1995, Bielefeld, Germany: Kunsthalle Bielefeld
• Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography, Merry Foresta, catalog of the exhibition, 1992, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press
• Proof: Los Angeles Art and the Photograph, Charles Desmarais, catalog of the exhibition, 1992, Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art
• Flora Photographica: Masterpieces of Flower Photography, William Ewing, 1991, New York: Simon and Shuster
• Photograpny 150 Years: Its Light and Shadow, Eikoh Hosoe, catalog of the exhibition, 1989, Tokyo: Nihon University
• Art by Chance: Fortuitous Impressions, George McKenna, catalog of the exhibition, 1989, Kansas City: Nelson Atkins Museum of Art
• Picturing California: a Century of Photographic Genius, Therese Heyman, catalog of the exhibition, 1989, Oakland and San Francisco: Oakland Museum and Chronicle Books
Landweber/Artists Publishing
Landweber's company, Landweber/Artists, has produced limited-edition portfolios of original prints by well-known photographers. These portfolios were set up to financially benefit the participating artists and have been purchased by collectors and international institutions of art:
• Recto/verso, twelve photograms in an edition of 50 portfolios plus 10 artist's-proof portfolios, twelve magazine-page photograms by Robert Heinecken presented exclusively in this portfolio, published by Landweber/Artists, Berkeley CA, 1989
• American Roads, 20 photographs in an edition of 100 portfolios, twenty photographers' images of the road and roadside America, published by Landweber/Artists, Los Angeles CA, 1982
• New California Views, 20 photographs in an edition of 100 portfolios, twenty contemporary photographers' images made in California, published by Landweber/Artists, Los Angeles CA, 1979
• Silver See, 21 photographs in an edition of 45 portfolios, a survey of Los Angeles photography, curated and edited by Landweber as a benefit for the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies, Los Angeles CA, 1977
Public Collections
• Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley CA
• Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
• California Museum of Photography, Riverside CA
• Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA
• Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ
• Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
• Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA
• International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester NY
• Library of Congress, Washington DC
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY
• Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee WI
• Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis MN
• Musée Français de la Photographie, Bievres, France
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles CA
• Museum of Fine Art, Houston TX
• Museum of Modern Art, New York NY
• Museet Moderna, Stockholm, Sweden
• Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego CA
• National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
• New York Public Library, New York NY
• Norton Simon Art Museum, Pasadena CA
• Oakland Museum, Oakland CA
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA
• Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton NJ
• Rhode Island School of Design, Providence RI
• San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego CA
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA
• Shadai Gallery, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
• St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis MO
• University of California at Santa Cruz Library, Santa Cruz CA
• Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver BC
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England
• Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester NY
• Wellesley College Museum, Wellesley MA
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