{"id":136,"date":"2007-11-20T12:03:10","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T12:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=136"},"modified":"2007-11-20T12:03:10","modified_gmt":"2007-11-20T12:03:10","slug":"david-plowden-vanishing-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=136","title":{"rendered":"David Plowden – Vanishing Point?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before – elsewhere – about David Plowden<\/strong>. His ‘Small Town America<\/em>‘, published in 1994 by Harry Abrams in NY (ISBN 0810938421) remains one of my favourite records of America – just one among around 20 of his books, and he was among the list of around 250 ‘Notable Photographers<\/em>‘ I first put on-line around 2000.<\/p>\n

He is also one of the photographers whose work<\/a> is included on David Sapir’s Fixing Shadows,<\/a> one of the earliest web sites to feature fine collections of ‘straight photography<\/em>‘ (and on which I was proud to be included<\/a> as the first UK photographer on the site.)<\/p>\n

So it was a little surprising to read on The Online Photographer<\/a> a review of his retrospective publication ‘Vanishing Point<\/em>‘ starting “David Plowden may be the best photographer you never heard of.<\/em>” Surely there can be few with a serious interest in photography who didn’t visit the old ‘About Photography<\/em>‘ or ‘Fixing Shadows<\/em>‘ – I ask tongue in cheek, although back in 2000, there really were not too many other serious games on the block.<\/p>\n

But of course there are people with a serious interest in photography – even some photographers – who were hardly out of nappies in those primitive days of the web, and now we are overwhelmed with material. Then I had problems finding sites worth writing about because there was so little available; now I have problems finding sites worth writing about because there is so much.<\/p>\n

Back to David Plowden, a fine and unassuming gentleman who I met a few years back, and a great photographer. Reviewer Geoffrey Wittig <\/strong>puts it well: “Walker Evans without the condescension.<\/em>” His work is clear, precise statements, beautifully seen and presented. As the review also says, it is perhaps low on irony, but it is full of a kind of love and reverence for the subject.<\/p>\n

Plowden’s lack of visibility in some circles largely resulted from a difference of opinion between him and curator John Szarkowski, and he never made it to the Czar’s pantheon. There seems to me to be a certain irony here, in that some of Szarkowski’s own photography has a very similar character; perhaps their failure to connect was some kind of turf war on the curator’s part.<\/p>\n

Plowden of course kept on at the photography for some 50 years, and at 75 has a show – as Arthur Gross points out in a comment to the review (do read it<\/a>) – at the Catherine Edelmann Gallery<\/a> in Chicago (until Dec 29, 2007.) You can also find his work at the Lawrence Miller Gallery<\/a>, but the definitive site is his own David Plowden<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

Vanishing Point (<\/em>ISBN-10: 0393062546) is an expensively produced book and one that needs a strong table to rest it on, with some 350 pages. Fortunately it is heavily discounted from suppliers such as Amazon<\/a> and would be a very acceptable Christmas present for many photographers, including myself!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written before – elsewhere – about David Plowden. His ‘Small Town America‘, published in 1994 by Harry Abrams in NY (ISBN 0810938421) remains one of my favourite records of America – just one among around 20 of his books, and he was among the list of around 250 ‘Notable Photographers‘ I first put on-line … Continue reading David Plowden – Vanishing Point?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photo-issues","category-photographers","category-reviews-etc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}