Peripatetic artist Jim Dow has compiled many of his best-known images in this generous love poem to America. On the road, using a large format camera, Dow has catalogued the stadiums, the road signs, the diners, and the ice cream parlors that pepper the landscape.
In his thoughtful and observant introduction, Ian Frazier writes:
Aspects of his photographs are funny, maybe even hilarious, but that’s only noted in passing. He’s more interested in what the American vision is, or was and in the scary open-endedness of our identity.
American Studies is a history story written in photographs of things. No people are visible in the finite world of Jim Dow’s America. Instead they are represented by their signs, totems, advertisements, storefronts—what anthropologists call artifacts. Since the photographs span more than twenty years of Dow’s work, American Studies shows a part of American life that may vanish, if it hasn’t already.
Jim Dow’s signature style witnesses the openness and individuality of America. He has traveled the country numerous times, and all along the way taken photographs of its objects and buildings. There is a certain nostalgia in the personal and sometimes almost kooky signs and designs that Dow encountered in his travels, but Dow is no sentimentalist. He shoots straight.
The book American Studies is published by powerHouse in association with CDS Books of the Center for Documentary at Duke University. It contains 110 color and black and white photographs. Signed copies will be available from the gallery.
Jim Dow was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1942. Both his MFA and his BFA are from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, where he studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Dow was also Walker Evans’s last assistant, during which time he developed his keen appreciation of both architectural relics and barbecue. He was one of the key photographers in the Seagram’s American Bicentennial project, Court House. His monographs include Marking the Land, and American Studies. Dow’s photographs are included in most major art museums throughout America. He teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University.
On view until July 15, 2011
JANET BORDEN, INC.
560 Broadway #601
New York NY 10012
212-431-0166
