Photo Exhibit Explores The World’s Landscapes

View selected images (below)

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY — Landscapes seen through the eyes of a preeminent landscape architect take center stage in the photo exhibit, "Ann Whiston Spirn: Knowing Where to Stand," to be shown Thursday November 11 - Friday December 17 in the James W. Palmer Gallery at Vassar College. An opening reception with Spirn, an award-winning photographer, author, and MIT professor, will be held at the Palmer Gallery on November 11 from 5:00-6:00 p.m, with an artist's talk in the Villard Room of the College Center immediately following from 6:00-7:00 p.m.

"Landscapes are living and dynamic, not static, full of dialogue and drama. I am drawn to photograph a landscape as one might photograph a person, to capture its distinctive spirit, to reveal its history, to show the contexts that shape it," explained Spirn. "There are few people in these photographs, but their traces and the stories they tell are everywhere, from the landforms they shape, the paths they make, the soil they till and the plants they tend, to the structures they build and the places they dwell."

Spirn's exhibit is drawn from The Eye Is a Door, her forthcoming book on photography as a way of seeing and thinking, and of reading landscape. Her first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, won the President's Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Artists, and she has also published The Language of Landscape.

A professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT, Spirn is internationally renowned for working at the intersection of landscape architecture and environmental planning, and for applying ecological landscape design to urban areas. Since 1987 she has directed the West Philadelphia Landscape Project (WPLP, which links landscape design, community development, and urban storm water management. The WPLP was cited as a "Model of Best Practice' at a White House summit in March 1999 for forty leading 'scholars and Artists in Public Life."

In 2001 Spirn received the International Cosmos Prize for "contributions to the harmonious coexistence of nature and humankind." She studied art history at Radcliffe College and landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Her photographs are in numerous institutional and private collections, including the University of Pennsylvania's.

?Ann Whiston Spirn: Knowing Where to Stand" is sponsored at Vassar College by the Environmental Studies program. It was made possible with funding by the Council for the Arts, Office of the Arts, and School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, and by the University of Pennsylvania.

For hours and other information on the James W. Palmer Gallery, located in the College Center at Vassar College, call the Office of Campus Activities (845) 437-5370. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations should call Cathy Jennings at the same phone number. Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Images

© Anne Whiston Spirn.

Grove of Grass i
Saihoji

Kyoto, Japan
2001

Grove of Grass ii
Saihoji
Kyoto, Japan
2001

Earth's Shadow Rising
Massachusetts Bay
Nahant, Massachusetts
2001

Fields of Force
Lines of Power
Glen Loy, Scotland
1978

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Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Thursday, October 14th, 2004.