Take Me to the River
Michael Kolster | United States
Photographer: Michael Kolster
Exhibit Title: Take Me to the River
Location: United States
Take Me to the River looks at five post-industrial rivers, the Androscoggin (ME/NH), the Schuylkill (PA), the James (VA), the Savannah (SC/GA) and the Los Angeles (CA), as they emerge from almost two centuries of disgrace.
These contemporary ambrotypes try to remind us that our waterways continue to be a constantly shifting union of natural imperatives and human yearnings.
With consensus building about our changing climate and the extent humans are responsible, these rivers challenge us to put aside the dichotomy of fallen or redeemed when we describe the places we live in and visit.
Project has been funded by a 2013 Fellowship from the Guggenhiem Foundation.
TAKE ME TO THE TO THE RIVER
The Androscoggin River (ME/NH)
The Schuylkill River (PA)
The James River (VA)
The Savannah River (SC/GA)
The Los Angeles River (CA)
Take Me to the River looks at five post-industrial rivers as they emerge from almost two centuries of disgrace. Since the 1972 Clean Water Act their water quality has improved dramatically; today public affection for them is on the rise as memories of their foul smell and the sewage clotting their courses fade. Our rivers appear to us now as they never have before, still carrying their burden of history but drawing us to their banks in ways our grandparents never could have envisioned.
These photographs are made in a portable darkroom along the banks of the rivers with the wet-plate photographic process. The chemical slurries that coax the image to appear on the glass plate mimic a river’s current. The tonal quality of the images references the dawn of photography and our country’s coincident industrial development. The result is a description of the present-day inextricably linked to the past while not necessarily bound by it. These contemporary ambrotypes try to remind us that our waterways continue to be a constantly shifting union of natural imperatives and human yearnings.
With consensus building about our changing climate and the extent humans are responsible, these rivers challenge us to put aside the dichotomy of fallen or redeemed when we describe the places we live in and visit. Allowing that a tapestry of influences is always acting upon the landscape helps to suspend hasty judgments about them, see them more clearly, and possibly balance them more effectively.
Michael Kolster
41 Longfellow Ave.
Brunswick, ME 04011
207-725-3185
michaelkolster@gmail.com
michaelkolster.com
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