Yale Bulletin and Calendar

May 2, 2008|Volume 36, Number 28|Two-Week Issue

This image of a grain elevator is among the 300 photographic prints by local photographer David Ottenstein '82 that have been acquired by the Beinecke.

Library acquires alumnus’
images of a changing Iowa

Images by New Haven photographer and Yale alumnus David Ottenstein will soon be part of the Yale Collection of Western Americana at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The 300 exhibition-quality prints that are being purchased by the Beinecke Library depict the architectural landscape of rural Iowa — of places where, in the photographer’s words, “the built environment meets the natural landscape.”

Ottenstein’s photographs are part of a project that he began four years ago to document the dramatic, ongoing transformation of the Iowa countryside, in which industrial farmsteads consisting of thousands of acres are replacing traditional family farms of a few hundred acres.

As agri-businesses accumulate large tracts of land and operate from centralized bases with larger, highly efficient modern machinery, the photographer observes, “traditional farmhouses, barns, silos, corncribs, sheds and other farm buildings that populated the Iowa landscape are left empty. Structures are disappearing gradually but steadily as vandals and nature take their incessant toll.” The simultaneous proliferation of discount retail giants has transformed the state’s small towns, where family-owned stores once dominated main streets, he notes.

George Miles, curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana, observes “Mr. Ottenstein combines aesthetic and documentary impulses in ways reminiscent of Walker Evans, Margaret Bourke-White and other American photographers of the 1930s, but with a contemporary sensibility that avoids sentimentality. The camera and photography are, for him, a means of exploring, organizing and finding meaning in the world.”

Ottenstein graduated from Yale College in 1982. His senior project, a photographic study of New Haven harbor with a text on the history of the city and the harbor, was awarded the annual prize for best undergraduate essay in American studies. A long-time resident of New Haven’s Beaver Hills neighborhood, Ottenstein has run an independent photographic studio for over a quarter of a century, specializing in architectural photography. Over the last decade he has explored the way that nature has begun to reclaim part of New England’s industrial landscape, a project that has allowed him to “explore issues of beauty amidst decay.”

He works predominantly with a 4 x 5 camera and traditional black and white photographic film, but has recently begun to create his prints digitally from scanned photographic negatives.

Ottenstein’s photographs have received awards at numerous juried shows and been the subject of solo exhibitions throughout Connecticut. His collaboration with The Center for Prairie Studies at Grinnell College, “Photographs of Iowa: The Vanishing Architectural Landscape of the Midwest,” has been awarded a grant by the Iowa Arts Council. His Iowa images have been exhibited at the Olsen Larsen Galleries in West Des Moines, Iowa, and a selection of images from the project can be seen at Ottenstein’s website: www.davidottenstein.com.

At the Beinecke Library, Ottenstein’s photographs join a renowned collection of books, manuscripts and photographs concerning the history of the American West, including extensive photographic collections by 19th-century American photographers Carleton Watkins, Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry Jackson, and 20th-century photographers including David Plowden, Carl Mydans, Eve Arnold, Robert Giard and Miguel Gandert.

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