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Saturday, May 3, 2008

In praise of Frank

You know how there are certain people that just simply make you happy? Well, my next couple of posts will be devoted to a few of my favorite people.

Frank Gohlke was just in town last week for the opening of his exhibition Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke at the Addison Gallery of American Art. I've done crits with Frank at MassArt and AIB, and know him from around town and Bruce. Bruce helped him build one of his darkrooms and like many others, assisted with a variety of things and got to know him well. To me, it's always a delight to see Frank and even a greater delight to hear him. Frank, as many know, is a slow talker (a Texas thing?). Oh - but what journeys he takes you on! You can see some more work at Gallery Kayafas through June 7th.

Frank moved to Arizona last year to oversee the photography program at the University of Arizona. There is a lot of energy & photo there - a friend from the BU PhD program just got hired there as the new photohistorian. Frank too qualifies as an academic. Holding a MA in English from Yale, he is as brilliant a writer as he is a photographer. You can see this to great effect in his current book, which functions as the show's catalogue, published by the equally amazing Center for American Places.

In celebration of Frankness (ha!), I present 2 videos. In the embedded one below, Frank talks about his photograph of a Hillsboro, Texas home and in the other, he is interviewed on a Dallas tv program. In the latter, unless you want to hear from the mayor of Dallas, you have to skip ahead about 60% through it, so I will let you access that clip via this link. I hope you enjoy Frank!

4 comments:

dalton said...

Thanks, I loved this. Frank Gohlke is one of my favorites! I'm waiting to see the Accommodating Nature show when it gets down to DC later this year.

LKB said...

Thanks for your post! It is a great show! I will add you to my blogroll.

amc said...

"the exhaust from a vegetable rocket" oh the things Frank can say and still sound brilliant.

why did he go and cut off the ponytail?

LKB said...

I know isn't that great? I didn't know he had a ponytail. Was that long ago?