John Gossage: The Complete Pond and a Little Romance

John Gossage

The Complete Pond and a Little Romance

The POND is a body of work – vintage silver print photographs taken around and away from a pond situated in an unkempt, wooded area at the edge of a city. The images and the book of the same title present a foil to Henry David Thoreau’s stay at Walden. Gossage’s photographs reveal a subtle vision of reality on the border between man and nature.

His nature is at once at odds with itself and with humankind, but the tone is ambiguous and evocative rather than didactic.

Robert Adams described the work as “ believable because it includes evidence of man’s darkness of spirit, memorable for the intense fondness [Gossage] shows for the remains of the natural world.” The POND is an integral yet under-appreciated body of work belonging to the “New Topographic” movement, an important part of photography in the 1970s and 80s.

Also on view will be prints from a series called THE ROMANCE INDUSTRY, a haunting pictorial investigation into the modern day area around Venice, a solemn rumination, incorporating elements of man’s indifference and nature’s response.

John Gossage (born New York, 1946 ) is known for his artists’ books and publications. He studied briefly Lisette Model and Alexey Brodovitch in the 1960s and has exhibited worldwide. He has produced seventeen books and boxes on specific bodies of work and his photographs are held in numerous private and public collections , including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Stephen Daiter Gallery is pleased to present The Pond…. As well as prints from The Romance Industry…