Where: photo-eye, 376 Garcia Street, Suite A Santa Fe, NM
When: Wednesday, November 20th 6-8pmContact: Melanie McWhorter or Krista Elrick
Phone: 505.988.5152 x 112, 505.438.4441
Email: melanie@photoeye.com, photographs@KristaElrick.com
Retracing Audubon Slide Talk at photo-eye Wednesday, November 20th at 6pm
photo-eye is pleased to announce that photographer Krista Elrick will give a slide talk about Retracing Audubon, a project that is reexamining John James Audubon's epic journey. Inspired by his pre-Civil War writings, Elrick's landscapes document the ecosystems described in The Birds of America.
While the name of Audubon is familiar and the images he created are ever popular; his eloquent writings are less well known. This project pairs contemporary photographs of the American landscapes in which he traveled, with his written impressions of those still wild habitats, bringing together his century with ours. Retracing Audubon: Contemporary Views is currently on exhibit until October 20, 2013 at John James Audubon Museum in Henderson Kentucky. It will then travel to the University of Southern Indiana, Laurence Library.
In this slide talk, Audubon's story is told while the changes in our native land are revealed. The alternative path of his life's journey is reflected in his essays, revealing an inspirational American story of self-discovery through failures. Yet in holding a singular vision, a great accomplishment in the publishing of the Birds of America emerged, in spite of daunting disappointments.
With Audubon's Episodes and Biographies as her guide, Krista Elrick's landscapes begin in Pennsylvania and follow the watershed to the Confluence. Many of the known landmarks along Ohio and Mississippi Rivers where he hunted, wrote, observed and painted birds. After years of careful research, her black and white photographs are filled with reflective content that captures the state of our times in the footsteps of Audubon. From the bluffs of Cincinnati on September 23, 2010, her silver gelatin collage is witness to the season when Audubon began his historic float on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers into New Orleans, in 1820. Her photo collages that were made along the Natchez Trace Trail are influenced by The Runaways. The episode when Audubon reminisces about cotton forests, freedom and walking. In 2012 Elrick photographed the Three Buttes Ranch of Montana. Here cattle and natural gas rigs are rooted where Audubon camped to hunt bison and bear. Such are the unexpected and ironic changes that have occurred in the landscape he so lovingly described and depicted long ago.
Support for the project comes from the Puffin Foundation LTD, USA Projects, New Mexico Arts, Artists to Artists and many individual donors.
Contact:
Photo-Eye Book Division Manager
505.988.5152 ext. 112
melanie@photoeye.com
Krista Elrick
505.438.4441
www.KristaElrick.com
photographs@KristaElrick.com