This 1986 photograph of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Washington, is the key image in the Yale Art Gallery's exhibition of photographs by Emmet Gowin, his first traveling show in over 10 years.

Gowin's aerial images capture human abuse of Earth

Images showing the scars that humans have left on the Earth will be featured in "Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth, Aerial Photographs," a new exhibit opening on Tuesday, April 23, at the Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibit features 92 hand-toned black-and-white images of the Earth's disturbed surfaces that have been created by the internationally renowned photographer since 1986. The show, Gowin's first major touring exhibition in over 10 years, was organized by Jock Reynolds, the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Yale Art Gallery. It will continue through July 28. Gowin had for many years been making portraits of his family and photographing landscapes throughout the United States and Europe, when the eruption of Mount St. Helen's in 1980 moved him to charter a light plane and use a hand-held camera to take pictures of the natural devastation below. Later, while re-visiting the volcano, the photographer had a pivotal artistic experience while flying over an abandoned nuclear reaction site, home of the Manhattan Project. "In 1986, returning, I thought for the last time, to Mount St. Helens," he said in a 1996 interview, "I took a side trip to Yakima, Washington, and a flight that changed my whole perception of the age in which I live. "In less than two hours flying over the Hanford Reservation, a pattern of relationships and a dark history of places and events emerged," he continued. "Still visible after 40 years were the pathways, burial mounds and waste disposal trenches, as well as skeletal remains of a city once used by over 30,000 people who built the first reactor and enriched the first uranium ... What I saw, imagined and now know, was that a landscape had been created that could never be saved. I began in the next year to search for the other signs of our 'nuclear age': missile silos, production sites, water treatment and disposal sites -- in short, the realities that I had unconsciously forgotten." Gowin's first photograph of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is the key image in the Yale Art Gallery show. As Reynolds points out in his catalogue essay, "Gowin has chemically hand-toned its surface in his photograph, to bring forth a strange metallic tint, one whose particular hue produces a distinct sensation of toxicity and alarm." The show features images that Gowin took in the 1980s of mining explorations in Montana, weapon and bomb disposal sites in Utah, an alkali wash and dry watering hole in New Mexico, and an abandoned trailer park on an Apache reservation in Arizona. It also includes the photos he took while visiting the Czech Republic in 1992, showing strip coal and chemo-petrol mines, power stations and other evidence of exploitation and devastation from the Soviet era. Also on view are Gowin's images from the 1990s of the American West -- from the Nevada Test Site to agricultural tracts using pivot irrigation in Kansas -- as well as the battlefields of Kuwait, an Israeli suburban settlement in Jerusalem and golf courses under construction in Japan. Reynolds notes that, through his work, Gowin has become "a thoughtful participant in raising what we now rather generically dub 'global consciousness.'" "Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth, Aerial Photographs" is accompanied by a fully-illustrated book that includes, in addition to Reynolds' essay, a description by nature writer and environmental activist Terry Tempest-Williams of a white-knuckle flight with Gowin over the West Desert; and the transcript of a conversation between Gowin and Philip Brookman, the senior curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Gowin -- who has been teaching photography at Princeton since 1973 and is now director of its Program in Visual Arts -- will talk about "Changing the Earth" as part of a museum-wide celebration on Thursday, May 16. Other events being offered in conjunction with the exhibition include "Emmet Gowin," a gallery talk by Reynolds on Tuesday, April 30; and "A Conversation About Contemporary American Landscape Photography," a panel discussion on May 2 moderated by Reynolds and featuring Yale faculty Richard Benson, Dolores Hayden and Stephen Kellert. Further information about these and other related events will appear in future issues of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar. "Emmet Gowin: Changing the Earth, Aerial Photographs" and its accompanying catalogue were made possible by contributions from Jane Watkins '79, Anna Marie and Robert Shapiro '56, Julia and Harrison Augur '64, Raymond and Helen DuBois '78, Evelyn and Robert Doran '55, Carolyn and Gerald Grinstein '54, Eliot Nolen '84 and Timothy Bradley '83, Lindsay McCrum '80, Richard and Ronay Menschel, Betsy Frampton, Carol and Sol LeWitt, and an anonymous donor, as well as the Mr. and Mrs. George Rowland B.A. 1933 Fund and The Heinz Family Foundation. The Yale University Art Gallery, located at 1111 Chapel St., is open to the public free of charge Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Thursdays until 8 p.m. through June) and Sunday 1-6 p.m. There is an entrance for persons using wheelchairs at 201 York St., with an unmetered parking space nearby on York Street. For information, call (203) 432-0606. Call (203) 432-0600 for recorded general and program information. Information is also available on the museum's website: www.yale.edu/artgallery. T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S For first time, applicants get admissions news online Communiversity Day will be held April 20 Study: Children's lives not improved by welfare reform Statesman warns victory in Afghanistan is . . . Surgeon/trustee tells youngsters: Don't make excuses F&ES adding four new assistant professors to faculty 'Journalists and Terrorism' is focus of Poynter talk Conference to explore Agent Orange's effect . . . IN FOCUS: Bright Bodies Program Yale Rep staging tale about 'the sacrifice of innocence' Gowin's aerial images capture human abuse of Earth Related exhibits offer views of the changing American landscape Scholar to discuss Freud's view of the biblical Moses Theme of sacrifice in biblical literature is explored in exhibit Leader in genome sequencing to speak at medical school Benefit art auction will feature works by Yale faculty artists Concert features musical portrait of 'Three Places in New Haven' Yale scientists begin new round of tests on cocaine vaccine Memorial service for James Tobin Frontiers of Science Online parking renewals offered again Campus Notes Bulletin Home|Visiting on Campus|Calendar of Events|In the News|Bulletin Board Yale Scoreboard|Classified Ads|Search Archives|Deadlines Bulletin Staff|Public Affairs Home|News Releases| E-Mail Us|Yale Home Page