John Gossage: Should Nature Change

Description

In John Gossage's words this is a book "with a particular context, of photographs to settle the feeling that I did not understand my home. To do that I set out, starting in 2003, to see what clarity my pictures might bring." And so came into being these photos of scenes, things, minor events and the look in the eyes of the young, all taken in every-day non-iconic places throughout his travels across America. "Should Nature Change," taken from the Book of Isaiah, is for Gossage both a declaration and a warning: "I am a humanist, like most of us are; I can't really step back to see the beauty and order of all this; closeness brings chaos and dread in this case. We have done harm to the place we live, I'm told, but it seems to me that we have done the most harm to ourselves and our best-laid plans. The planet has a plan to fix this, if we don't." To be continued... This Land grows weary of her Inhabitants. John Winthrop

John Gossage, born in New York in 1946 and now residing in Washington, D.C., studied with Lisette Model and Alexey Brodovitch in 1960-61. In the late 1960s he learned Telecaster guitar from Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton, leaving professional music in 1973 to return to photography. Between 1974 and 1990 Gossage exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York; since 1990 he has concentrated almost exclusively on publications, producing over 20 titles. His books with Steidl include The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler (2010) and Looking up Ben James - A Fable (2018).