NEW YORK, NY.- Although best known for his large-format color photographs made with vintage Kodak Brownie cameras, William Christenberry has also consistently produced work with 35 mm Kodachrome slide film ever since he took up photography. William Christenberry: Kodachromes (
Aperture, October 2010) is the first publication to showcase this stunning and previously unknown body of work, spanning from 1964 to 2007, of which only a small number of images have ever been published or exhibited.
As in all of Christenberrys photographs, the subject matter is the rural Deep South: the twisting back roads, open landscapes, rusted signage, and ramshackle vernacular architecture found in Hale County, Alabama. Though many of the sites pictured in this rare collection are new, other subjects grew iconic in Christenberrys oeuvre as he has returned to photograph them for decadesthe red building in the forest, Sprott Church, the Palmist Sign, and the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others. However, the photographs in William Christenberry: Kodachromes, made with a camera that allowed for greater mobility, reveal new ways of considering Christenberrys perennial subjects and offer further insight into the working method of this venerable artist.
WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY (born in Hale County, Alabama, 1936) has been a professor at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Washington, D.C., since 1968. His work has been the subject of dozens of solo shows and exhibitions over the last forty years, and can be found in numerous permanent collections, including those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona. His work was the subject of a major year-long solo exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2006.
RICHARD B. WOODWARD (essay) is an art critic based in New York who frequently writes about photography.
9 2/5 x 11 2/5 in. (23.9 x 29 cm)
176 pages; 115 four-color images
Hardcover with jacket
ISBN 978-1-59711-147-8
$65.00; £45.00