Peter Goin and the Photography of Environmental Change: Visual Literacy and Altered Landscapes

Description

Peter Goin and the Photography of Environmental Change narrates the forty-year quest of award-winning and internationally exhibited contemporary photographer Peter Goin to document human-altered landscapes across America and beyond. It is a collaborative work between an artist and a literary critic, a retrospective of an accomplished environmental photographer, and an innovative education in visual reading. Enduring howling wind, pounding rain, and blistering sun, Goin bears witness to radioactive landscapes, abandoned mines, simulated swamps, rechanneled rivers, controlled burns, overgrown ruins, industrialized agriculture, shrinking reservoirs, feral spaces in the city, architected wilderness, sacred wastelands, contested borderlands, and more. Based on more than seventy hours of taped interviews with the artist spanning over a decade, trailblazing ecocritic Cheryll Glotfelty narrates the arc of Goin's career, sharing excerpts from their conversations that reveal his brilliant mind and piquant personality while situating his work within the broader context of environmental thinkers. This beautifully illustrated volume, with 200 images in color and black-and-white showcasing Goin’s work, will be a fascinating and insightful read for upper-level students, academics, and researchers in photography, environmental history and culture, landscape studies, and environmental humanities. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Leave your shoes at the door 2 Biographical sketch: It’s not about me 3 On the road 4 Evolving landscapes 5 American ruins 6 Urban wild 7 A line on the landscape 8 Landscapes of fear 9 Militarizing the American West 10 Landscape is architecture 11 Humanature 12 The postmodern West 13 Sensual anthropomorphs 14 Arid waters 15 Changing mines 16 Water into light 17 Ancestral artisans 18 New nature 19 Artifacts of the future 20 Epilogue: Goin home Appendix A: Peter Goin’s books, archives, and collections Appendix B: Keys to reading the visual language of photography, by Peter Goin Index