'Waiting for Light'
posted on: Aug. 6, 2008
"Waiting for Light"
Michael Johnson
Show:
Aug. 19 - Sept. 19
Catich Gallery
Galvin Fine Arts Center
Gallery Hours:
11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Tuesday–Friday
Opening Reception:
Friday, Aug. 29
5-7 p.m.
Catich Gallery
According to Johnson, “Making photographs is a highly intentional process for me. Rather than exposing many negatives in the hope that some will turn out well, I spend most of my time looking at the land and planning the finished image … often returning to a promising landscape when the light or clouds are more favorable, or waiting for hours while shadows sweep across the land.” The Los Angeles Times called Johnson “one of the country’s premier landscape photographers.” The Washington Post says, “What Yosemite was to Ansel Adams, Northwest Illinois is to Michael Johnson.”
Johnson, who has been photographing rural America for more than 35 years, is a self-taught photographer tracing his inspiration to the European master painters of the 17th century. Using a traditional large format producing silver/gelatin prints from view camera negatives, his black-and-white photographs have been exhibited at corporations, hospitals and major museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago; The California Museum of Photography, Riverside; and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Mass. Johnson and his wife, Patricia, operate a small sawmill and sustainable hardwood lumber business on their family tree farm near Mount Carroll, Ill.
For more information, contact Curator Heather Lovewell at 563/209-1287.