Photographer Gregory Conniff Solos at the Chazen Museum of Art

Wednesday, 30 August 2006 21:15

Madison, WI - The Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison, will present an exhibition of large scale black and white pastoral images by photographer Gregory Conniff from September 2 through November 5, 2006.  Wild Edges: Photographic Ink Prints by Gregory Conniff will be the first solo presentation of the artist's work at the Chazen and an illustrated catalogue will accompany it.

A resident of Wisconsin for more than thirty years, Conniff has focused much of his artistic energy on the rural Midwest, exploring the interdependent relationship between land and people.  For the past fifteen years, Conniff has also been making pictures of rural Mississippi, again focusing on elements of the landscape that resonate with a universal sense of aesthetic familiarity.  As he explains, "I am interested in work that defines and protects the vanishing, commonplace beauties that let us know we're home." 

Wild Edges: Photographic Ink Prints by Gregory Conniff is an exhibition about beauty and its necessary place in daily human life.  Most of the pictures in the show were made specifically for the exhibition.  All are printed in a rich four-black ink process that evokes the sensuality of nineteenth century photographic materials.  In Conniff's affectionate and intelligent work, there is a visible connection to the history of landscape art, reaching back as far as Claude Lorrain and seventeenth century Dutch drawing.  Conniff is also a leading practitioner of a new pastoralism that is casting a contemporary eye on the current state of America's open land.  Postmodern in the best sense, Conniff's pictures address the timeless human need to see beauty in the world that shapes our lives.