Seattle native and 2012 Neddy Award winner Eirik Johnson presents an artist talk at G. Gibson Gallery this Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm where his third solo exhibition Camps & Cabins, large scale photographs of Pacific Northwest mushroom hunters and their makeshift structures, is currently on view (through May 26, 2012).

Johnson, the photographer behind the 2009 monograph Sawdust Mountain, has had a long history documenting the Pacific Northwest, earning himself a role as forerunner of the second generation of topographic photographers. Sawdust Mountain was a four-year exploration of the “tenuous relationship between industries reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support,” throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, he explains in a video interview conducted at Aperture Gallery.

Work from that series has since been made into a limited-edition print, Freshly Felled Trees, as well as a limited-edition portfolio of three archival pigment prints, Adult Books, Firewood, and Truck for Sale, (Port Angeles, Washington), Weyerhaeuser Sorting Yard Along the Chehalis River, (Cosmopolis, Washington), and The Road to Forks, (Washington), all available at Aperture.

Johnson’s portfolio, West Oakland Walk, exploring the beauty of an urban landscape shaped by poverty, was also featured in Aperture issue 185.

Read a brief review of Camps & Cabins in Seattle Weekly or Visual Art Source, and hear what Johnson has to say about the project himself in a Q&A with CityArts magazine.

Artist Talk:
Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm
FREE

Exhibition on view:
April 19 – May 26, 2012

G. Gibson Gallery
300 South Washington Street
Seattle, Washington 98104
(206) 587-5751

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.

• LensBlog explores why Rodrigo Abd‘s photograph of a young Syrian boy expressing grief over the death of his father landed on the front page of three of the most prominent national papers in the United States.

• Time magazine’s photo blog Lightbox celebrated it’s one year anniversary, revisiting their first post and the continuing saga of War is Personal by legendary photojournalist Eugene Richards, of the controversial 1994 Aperture monograph Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue.

• Conscientious, GalleristNY and LVP Magazine weigh in on Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MOMA and on the “unanimity” among critics in New York reviewing it.

• One year after a devastating tsunami hit the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, The New York Times does a “Side-by-Side look at Distruction and Renewal.” The Big Picture at Boston.com, Huffington Post, National Geographic, and The New Yorker ran similar posts, as did Time’s Lightbox, featuring a slideshow of photos by James Nachtwey, whose work is in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011) edited by Kathy Ryan.

• NPR prompts the question: “You know Ansel, But Who is Robert Adams (And Why Should You Care)?” Bob Adams, of the recently reissued Aperture monographs The New West and Summer Nights, Walking, has a traveling retrospective The Place We Live now on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

• Sarah Palmer was just announced winner of the Aperture 2011 Portfolio Prize for her series As a Real House. Read her 2009 review of Eirik Johnson’s Sawdust Mountain, Robert Adam’s Summer Nights and Joel Meyerowitz’s Legacy, from when she was editor at Metropolis Magazine.

• Finally, Jonathan Blaustein‘s intensely personal column on APhotoEditor.com reviewing Donald Weber‘s beautifully put together photobook Interrogations is one of the best-written posts we’ve read all week. Interrogations will also be reviewed in the upcoming second issue of The Photobook Review.

The holiday season is the perfect time to catch up on current exhibits. The following photography group shows are on view now and bring together diverse and exciting rosters of artists:

photo by Eirik Johnson

2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize Finalists Exhibition at the ICA in Boston

The Foster Prize is a biennial award and exhibition presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. From the nine finalists selected this year artist Amie Siegel was recently announced as the 2010 Foster Prize winner. All the finalist’s works are on view at the ICA through January 17th, and feature a selection of challenging conceptually driven pieces in a range of mediums by Boston area artists. On view in the exhibit is an installation by photographer Eirik Johnson whose recent monograph Sawdust Mountain was released by Aperture in spring of 2009. Also featured in the exhibit are works by Robert De Saint Phalle, Fred H. C. Liang, Rebecca Meyers, Matthew Rich, Daniela Rivera, Evelyn Rydz and Stephen Tourlentes.

2010 James and Audrey Foster Prize Finalists
On view through January 17, 2011

Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Avenue
Boston, MA

photo by Toni Catany

The Spanish National Photography Prize: Connections and Confrontations at Aperture Gallery

The current exhibition on view in Aperture’s gallery through January 11th provides an expansive look at Spain’s changing photographic history with over sixty five works by fifteen photographers. Presented in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Culture and curated by Carmen de la Guerra and Javier Díez from Artendencias, the photographs in Connections and Confrontations by artists Juan Colom, Cristina García Rodero and Carlos Pérez Siquier alongside newer wave photographers such as Joan Fontcuberta, Chema Madoz, and Alberto García Alix, among others picture everything from Bull fighters, to country weddings to contemplations of form and shape, presenting collectively a country’s aesthetic history.

The Spanish National Photography Prize: Connections and Confrontations
On view November 19 – January 11 2011

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, New York

image by Ishmael Randall Weeks

Planet of Slums Group Show at Third Streaming

Curated by Omar Lopez-Chahoud and Aperture Green Cart artist LaToya Ruby Frazier, Planet of Slums a group show on view at New York City’s Third Streaming gallery. Inspired by Mike Davis’ book Planet of Slums, this exhibit of the same name presents artist’s observing the current urban, economic and social concerns of urban populations. Participating artists include Manuel Acevedo, Erik Benson, Tony Buba, Nanna Debois Buhl, Zachary Fabri, Patrick Hamilton, Takashi Horisaki, Greg Lindquist, Ishmael Randall Weeks, Elisabeth Subrin, Rishi Singhal, Juana Valdes and Lori Waselchuck.

Planet of Slums
On view December 17, 2010 – February 5, 2011

Third Streaming
10 Greene Street, 2nd Floor
New York, New York

Western Larch Seedlings by Eirik Johnson

Eirik Johnson’s homage to the landscape and communities of the Pacific Northwest, Sawdust Mountain, is on view at Aperture Gallery through June 10th. For your viewing pleasure, now an accompanying podcast can be easily downloaded to enjoy an exhibition tour narrated by the photographer himself who shares the compelling stories of his subjects.

Click here to download Sawdust Mountain Podcast

Click here to purchase Eirik Johnson’s monograph Sawdust Mountain

Click here to read about the Sawdust Mountain exhibit in Artforum’s Critic Picks

Recently photographer Eirik Johnson gave an interview about his exhibition Sawdust Mountain currently on view at Aperture Gallery. The previously posted first part of the interview in which Johnson talked about key images in the exhibit is viewable here. Now, in the second segment of Johnson’s interview, learn more about Johnson’s moving portraits which explore relationships between subject and environment. Johnson shares the stories behind several of his encounters with inhabitants of the Northwest of all ages, touching on how these communities have adjusted to the decline of the region’s bedrock industries. Speaking about his portraits of the younger generation, Johnson raises questions about the uncertain future of these communities.

Click here to purchase Eirik Johnson’s monograph Sawdust Mountain

View Sawdust Mountain portfolio and Freshly Felled Trees limited-edition print

Eirik Johnson‘s Sawdust Mountain series, a culmination of four years photographing throughout the pacific Northwest, is currently on view at Aperture Gallery. Johnson gave an interview on location and shared the stories of several of his images from the exhibition. He discussed the spirit of the series, how he tried to convey the way he sees the relationship changing between industries based on natural resources in the Northwest and the communities they created, in a time of economic decline when these communities have had to adjust. Johnson also touched on his process from making the work to the sequencing of the photographs in order to tell a story with a consistent “tonal palette and mood” throughout the series.

The second installment of Eirik Johnson’s interview in which he discusses the portraits in Sawdust Mountain will be available next week! (more…)

Freshly Felled Trees by Eirik Johnson

A new exhibition of photographs from Eirik Johnson’s body of work and recently released monograph Sawdust Mountain will open at Aperture gallery April 15th and will remain on view through June 4th.

In Johnson’s words his photographs are “a melancholy love letter of sorts, my own personal ramblings.” This poetic sensibility is apparent in the images of Sawdust Mountain which consider the environmental impact and sustainability of industries reliant on the natural resources of Oregon, Washington and Northern California. Depicting towns at the heart of the worlds of logging and salmon farming in the U.S., Johnson captures the uncertainty that follows after an industry boom has ended as well as the hazy light and landscapes of the Northwest.

Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain

Opening Reception:

Thursday, April 15, 6:00 – 8:00 PM

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505 – 5555

Click here to read Ahorn Magazine’s recent interview with Eirik Johnson

Click here to purchase the monograph Sawdust Mountain

Click here to view Aperture’s Limited Edition print of Eirik Johnson’s photograph Freshly Felled Trees

The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle opens an exhibition this week featuring works from Eirik Johnson’s recently published Sawdust Mountain, accompanied by 19th-century photographs from the University of Washington Special Collections by photographers such as Darius Kinsey, curated by Johnson. He will also give an artist’s talk on Thursday in celebration of the opening. Eirik Johnson describes his photographs as “a melancholy love letter of sorts, my own personal ramblings.” Through this poetic approach, Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, one aspect of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.

Click here to purchase your copy of Eirik Johnson’s monograph Sawdust Mountain

Click here to watch a video of Eirik Johnson speaking at Aperture Gallery via our multimedia section

Eirik Johnson: Sawdust Mountain
Exhibition on view:
Saturday, October 24, 2009—Sunday, January 31, 2010

Artist’s Talk: Thursday, October 22, 7:00 pm

The Henry Art Gallery
University of Washington
15th Avenue NE, at 41st Street
Seattle, Washington
(206) 543-2280

Watch an excerpt of Eirik Johnson’s talk last May on his new book Sawdust Mountain at Aperture Gallery. In this clip, Johnson tells the story of Missy, an eighty-eight-year old artist who has spent all her life in the Washington state area and grand-daughter of one of the first white settlers in the Northwest. Missy represents the connections between the past, present and future of this changing region.

Sawdust Mountain is a culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California. A Seattle native, Johnson focuses in this book on the tenuous relationship between industries such as timber and salmon, reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Johnson reveals a landscape imbued with an uncertain future—no longer the region of boomtowns built upon the riches of massive old growth forests, at a turning point to protect its natural resources extensively exploited over the last century. Through a poetic approach, Sawdust Mountain records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, aspects of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.

Johnson also discussed his previous photography projects that lead to Sawdust Mountain and read a poem by David Guterson included in the book, while going through his images before answering questions from the audience.

You can watch the talk in its entirety, divided in three different clips, on the multimedia section of our website or by clicking on the links below:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

View related limited-edition print and portfolio.

Eirik Johnson’s monograph Sawdust Mountain offers a crisp, breathtaking look at the American West while at the same time commenting on its grim evolution. What was once a bounty of resources and natural beauty has now become over-developed and strained due to the demands of industry. The Pacific Northwest as it once was is now fading, and Johnson strives to capture both the spirit of its original lure and its shifting identity.

Both East and West-coasters have a chance to meet Eirik Johnson, who will be signing copies of his book at Crumpler Store in San Francisco, and later at Rena Bransten for the opening of his exhibition today. Aperture Gallery will host a talk and book signing with Johnson on Tuesday, May 26 in New York City.

Eirik Johnson: Book Signing
Thursday, May 21, 2009 4:00–6:00 pm

Crumpler Store
Level 3, Westfield Center
845 Market Street
San Francisco, California
(415) 896-2245

Sawdust Mountain, Eirik Johnson
Exhibition and Opening Reception

Opening reception:
Thursday, May 21, 2009, 6:30 pm

Exhibition on view:
Thursday, May 21, 2009 –Saturday, June 27, 2009

FREE

Rena Bransten
77 Geary Street
San Francisco, California
(415) 982-3292

Eirik Johnson: Artist’s Talk and Book Signing
Tuesday, May 26, 2009 6:30 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555