Aperture Foundation 547 W 27th Street, 4th Floor NY 10001 New York États-Unis
A culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain focuses on the tenuous relationship between industries reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Timber and salmon are the bedrock of a regional Northwest identity, but the environmental impact of these industries is increasingly at odds with the contemporary ideal of sustainability. In this exhibition (and the accompanying Aperture book of the same title), Eirik Johnson reveals a landscape imbued with an uncertain future—no longer the region of boomtowns built upon the riches of massive old growth forests.
The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth A. Brown, Chief Curator, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, where the exhibition originated and was on view last October through January 2010.
In a feature on the work published in FT Weekend Magazine last fall, Claire Holland writes, “Although the images are unsentimental, many exert a strangely emotive tug—part nostalgia for an optimistic past, part sadness that a natural environment, indelibly marked and altered by mankind, is dissolving before our eyes.”
Johnson’s work evokes the 19th century landscapes of Carleton Watkins, one of the first artists to document this region, and the work of Depression-era photographer Walker Evans.
Sawdust Mountain is made possible, in part, by the generous support of The Turner Foundation, Inc. The exhibition Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain is supported by ArtsFund, PONCHO, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and Patrons of the Henry Art Gallery.