Worcester Telegram & Gazette News CURRENT: 52° World/Regional | City/Wachusett | North | West | South | East | Valley | People | Time Out | Etc. | Health | Food | Court | Opinion Sunday, October 1, 2006 The land and man Photographs explore interaction By Susan Spencer CORRESPONDENT Photographer Frank Gohlke talks about his photograph “Chemical Brook Enters the Sudbury River — Ashland, Mass.” (PETER J. CAVANNA) Enlarge photo SOUTHBORO— The endless north Texas prairie stands in stark contrast to the intimate glimpse of fish schooling beside lily pads in the Sudbury River shallows. But it was the plains horizon of his childhood that influenced internationally recognized photographer Frank Gohlke to focus his view on landscapes — from wide-open expanses to natural enclaves tucked in the suburbs. Since those north Texas days, Mr. Gohlke has used photography to understand how people fit into the world around them. The work of Mr. Gohlke, now a Southboro resident, is on exhibit at the Arts Center at Southboro. The show, “Four Landscapes: Photographs by Frank Gohlke,” opened Sept. 15 and runs through Oct. 14. The gallery is open from 3 to 6 p.m. daily at 21 Highland Ave. The exhibition highlights work from four of Mr. Gohlke’s projects: “Mount St. Helens: Photographs 1981-1990” (black-and-white), “Living Water: Photographs 1989-1993” (color), 42° 30’ N: A Line on the Land 2002-2006” (color), and “Landscapes of Longing: Queens, NY, in the 21st century 2003-2004” (black-and-white). Approximately 75 people attended the exhibition’s opening reception Sept. 15. The Arts Center at Southboro is housed in a former school, given by the town in the 1990s to the Southboro Cultural Arts Council to serve as a community resource for exhibiting, creating and teaching art. The Arts Center rents out studio space and offers classes for children and adults in such diverse subjects as quilting, drawing, photography and drama. Mr. Gohlke has a darkroom in the lower level. Music at the reception was provided by another resident artist, guitarist Eric Byers, who also teaches at Berklee College of Music in Boston. “It’s an amazing experience bringing these beautiful shows,” said Southboro Cultural Arts Council chairman Catherine Weber about the six exhibitions put on each year. The “Four Landscapes” show seemed a natural fit for the council, with a famous photographer affiliated with the Arts Center. “We’re very blessed to have Frank in our basement,” Ms. Weber commented. Arts Center director Ann Northup, who started on the job June 1 after retiring from teaching art in the Lexington schools, jumped right in to pull the exhibition together. Those at the reception were captivated by Gohlke’s images of human interactions with nature. The “Line on the Land” series features images across the 42° 30’ parallel of latitude through Massachusetts, from Hubbardston and Petersham to Boxboro. Wooded terrain is crisscrossed by railroad tracks, power lines and a country road in “Boxboro Station.” Piles of fresh-cut pine reveal human reliance on nature in “Conkey Sawmill, Petersham, Massachusetts, 2002”. The many characteristics of the Sudbury River are the subject of the “Living Waters” project. The river is portrayed filled with life in “Fish Nest, the Sudbury River, Framingham, Massachusetts, June 1991.” It also bears signs of human recklessness, such as the submerged mangled and rusty frame of an abandoned wheelchair in “Wheelchair, the Sudbury River — Framingham, June 1992”. Images of Queens, N.Y., examine the more concentrated effects of suburban life on the land. Pavement and brick crowd the landscape. And yet small patches of green, oases amid the built environment, are framed by fences — from simple chain-link ones to ornate wrought-iron designs. The fences both protect and distance the gardens from their surroundings. Some of Mr. Gohlke’s most striking photos are of nature’s own power to change itself. His series of silver-gelatin prints of Mount St. Helens, Washington, in the years after its eruption in 1980 illustrate the awesome power of the earth. Blackened tree trunks lie strewn like burnt matchsticks on the mountainside in “Aerial view: downed forest near Elk Rock — 6 miles NW of Mount St. Helens, Wash., 1981.” A thin mist rises hauntingly from the base of the lava dome in “Inside Mount St. Helens Crater 1983.” “It’s like hell has come to Earth,” observed reception-goer Ellen Dunlap of West Boylston. It wasn’t the dramatic vistas that sparked Mr. Gohlke’s interest in landscapes, however. In an interview, Mr. Gohlke described the area he grew up in around Wichita Falls, Texas, as molding his understanding of places and how one moves around in space. “There wasn’t much to look at except the horizon,” he said. But that didn’t mean it was dull. “Photography is a generous and infinitely applicable medium. That’s part of the magic — it opens whole worlds in ways that many things don’t.” Mr. Gohlke’s commitment to landscape photography emerged when he moved to Minneapolis in 1971 and “got hooked” on the subject of grain elevators. The simple yet stately structures were common sights in Minneapolis and St. Paul, part of the agricultural life that surrounded them. “I just got very interested in that whole area of life,” Mr. Gohlke said. “What do people do in space, especially with so much? I had a hunch grain elevators were central to that.” Although some landscape photographers clearly advocate for conservation, Mr. Gohlke says his pictures are not message-laden. “I hope people take away from an encounter with my work a fuller sense of the possibilities in the world around them. It’s unnecessarily confining to one’s sense of enjoyment and daily life to divide the world into interesting and uninteresting. Just using your eyes is incredible enrichment of every day. You don’t have to travel to experience awe and wonder. It’s all right outside your door.” Henry David Thoreau, the transcendentalist writer and champion of the everyday life, liked to say he had traveled a great deal in Concord. Mr. Gohlke shares that perspective. “The closer he looked,” Mr. Gohlke said, “the bigger Concord got. I try to live my life that way.” Mr. Gohlke said that like Thoreau, he tries to bring an attitude of careful attention and curiosity to his work. He hopes that attitude rubs off on his audience. Sometimes the more baffled someone is by an image of his, the more likely it is to happen. Mr. Gohlke is pleased when someone scratches his head and says, “Why did he take a picture of that?” Getting just the right shot isn’t easy. It’s a very high-stakes game. “I don’t know how I do it. If I did, I wouldn’t make any mistakes. I just try things. I don’t want to repeat past successes either. You have to abandon certainty, as in all art,” he explained. Much of the photography world has moved to digital, but Mr. Gohlke still prefers large-format film, especially for black and white. He said, “I have pretty stringent demands for what I look at. It doesn’t have anything essential to do with how it’s made. I’m not quite happy with the look of black-and-white (digital) imagery because of what it’s not. Silver suspended in gelatin — I love the way it (silver) looks.” Techniques and media may change, but the main thing Mr. Gohlke, 64, is still learning from photography after nearly 40 years is about life. “It’s an ongoing process. I just wait for the next thing,” he concluded. Mr. Gohlke has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received numerous photographic commissions, including Seagram’s Corp.’s Court House project, the Contemporary Texas project sponsored by the Amon Carter Museum, projects for the Laboratorio di Fotografia in Reggio Emilia, Italy, the George Gund Foundation in Cleveland, for Queens College in New York and for Vassar College. Mr. Gohlke teaches at Massachusetts College of Art, Art Institute of Boston and Harvard. Mr. Gohlke lives in Southboro with his wife, former curator and now freelance editor Lucy Flint, and his two daughters, Emma and Grace, who attend Algonquin Regional High School. He has a grown daughter and two grandchildren who live in New York. © 2006 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp. Advertiser Credit Application (PDF 14K) Order the Telegram & Gazette, delivered daily to your home or office!