Dear HCN,
The wording of your
accolade to the late Galen Rowell (HCN, 9/2/02: Farewell to a great
mountain photographer) was misleading. In recent years, his
“transcendental approach to capturing the natural world” meant
descending from fine art downward, past popular art into the
dubious world of kitsch. His Mountain Light Gallery in Bishop,
Calif., shows him imitating and repeating himself again and again,
with dozens of similar images, most of them showing mountain peaks
dawn-lighted by unnatural digitized colors, including garish
oranges, shocking pinks and nauseating purples. Certainly, these
are not photographs of “the natural world.” They are not “seemingly
impossible photographs,” but just plain impossible and unnatural.
It is not unfair to call his recent work Day-Glo
Digital.
Towards the end, he became, in the words
of Somerset Maugham, like “an old painter whom the desire for
commercial success had made false to the genius of his
youth.”
Tom
Clayton
Bridgeport, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Rowell devolved to kitsch.
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