Lecture: Frank Gohlke May 20, 2005

Frank Gohlke, a leading figure in American landscape photography, will give a lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20 in Boliou Hall, Room 104 at Carleton College. He will discuss landscape and how it both records and reveals the push and pull of human and nature. The event is free and open to the public.

Gohlke?s work often begs the question of how much ?nature? is actually there in our present environment. His images of Wichita Falls, Texas, and Minneapolis show the edges of these cities and how they spill over into the surrounding environment. Working at and around Mount St. Helens after its 1980 eruption, he documented scenes of flattened forests and eroded hillsides in a series of black and white photos. He approaches this potentially controversial material with a serene eye. He does not pretend to have answers, but presents evidence that then suggests questions the viewer might ask. He frames his subjects with extreme care, often printing entire negatives with a virtuoso technique that is rich in tonal range and color effects.

Gohlke received his B.A. from the University of Texas, Austin, in English literature and his M.A. in English from Yale. He followed this with a year of study with photographer Paul Caponigro, and soon after launched his career in photography. He has exhibited his work nationally since the early 1970s and has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others. His work is in many private and public collections, including the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.

In addition to his exhibitions, Gohlke has taught photography at many prestigious universities, including the Massachusetts College of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and Harvard, Princeton and Yale. He has published many books of his works, including ?Landscapes from the Middle of the World? (1988), ?Measure of Emptiness: Grain Elevators in the American Landscape? (1992) and ?The Sudbury River: A Celebration? (1998).

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s art and art history department at (507) 646-4341.