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Photographs by Barbara Bosworth at Princeton University Art Museum
Exhibition Dates: March 14 through June 18, 2000
PRINCETON -- "Photographs by Barbara Bosworth," the first survey of the artist's panoramic landscapes from the past decade, is on view at The Art Museum, Princeton University, through June 18, 2000.
Bosworth creates her photographs by exposing two, three, or four large-format 8 by 10 inch negatives in sequence, which are contact printed on a single sheet of photographic paper, resulting in images that capture an extremely broad expanse of space. "I wanted to make photographs that conveyed the feeling of being surrounded by the landscape," she explains of her unique working method.
She has photographed at roadside vistas and tourist destinations as well as in the more rugged landscape of the American West, yet all of her images concern our interaction with nature and the environment.
The exhibition will include selections from two of the artist's ongoing projects: a series of portraits of hunters and photographs of national champion trees. Drawn to the hunters’ intimate and quite different understanding of the landscape, Bosworth creates images that are directly engaging, while not avoiding the violence that is at the center of this pursuit. National champion trees are the largest trees of each species as identified by the American Forestry Association. Although seemingly a documentary endeavor, the champion tree photographs are as concerned with details of the surrounding landscapes -- in backyards and along highways as well as in state and national parks -- as of the trees themselves.
"Photographs by Barbara Bosworth" also features a unique narrative sequence, The Bitterroot River, acquired for the Museum's permanent collection on the occasion of the exhibition. A series of twenty-four images made predominantly along Montana's Bitterroot River, the photographs move from tightly composed images of the water's surface to the surrounding landscape to a group of still life images, comprising an extended narrative on loss and memory, and the unalterable links that form between people and place.
"Barbara Bosworth's photographs are graced with an uncommon elegance and intimacy," explains Toby Jurovics, associate curator of photography, who organized the exhibition. "The expansive sweep and clarity of her prints open the landscape before us with a deceptive agility, but it is in their richness of experience and sensation that they are so compelling."
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1953, Barbara Bosworth is professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. She has received fellowships or grants from the Friends of Photography, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Buhl Foundation. Her photographs have been included in numerous landscape exhibitions, including "Crossing the Frontier," organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and "The Altered Landscape," organized by the Reno Museum of Art, and are in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
An illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, published by The Art Museum, is available in the Museum Shop or through the Museum's publications office for $10.00.
The Art Museum is open to the public without charge. Free highlights tours of the collection are given every Saturday at 2 p.m. The Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. It is closed on Monday and major holidays. The Museum Shop closes at 5 p.m.
The Museum is located in the middle of the Princeton University campus. Picasso's large sculpture Head of a Woman stands in front. For further information, please call (609) 258-3788.
SPECIAL EVENTSGallery Talk: Friday, March 31, at 12:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 2, at 3 p.m.,
The Art Museum, "Photographs by Barbara Bosworth," Toby Jurovics, associate curator of photography
Lecture by Barbara Bosworth: Thursday, April 13, at 4:30 p.m., Room 106 of McCormick Hall, Princeton University campus.