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Subcribe to comment rss feedGreg Piazza chooses one of his favourite images
Greg Piazza
Greg Piazza of Dallas, Texas “@the_dallas_artist” is an award winning photographer and painter frequently featured in online contemporary and fine art publications. Since 2004 he has won several national awards including The National: Best of Contemporary Photography 2018 and 2017 Fort Works Art, 40 Under 40. Greg’s exhibition history includes exhibitions in Dallas, Fort Worth, New York, Scottsdale, Naples, Denver, Ann Arbor, Fort Wayne, and Waterbury. His artworks has been collected by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Mattatuck Museum, and numerous private and corporate collectors.
In 2007, Greg became interested in how our environments shape our thoughts and emotions and set out to photograph these scenes to later reflect upon in his paintings. In addition to his self-taught creative style, Greg has worked with Alan Ross on fine-tuning his approach to processing and printing. Alan is an internationally respected master photographer and educator who worked side-by-side with Ansel Adams as his photographic assistant.
When On Landscape asked me to pick a photograph to write an End Frame article about, I was not only humbled but also very indecisive. There are so many landscape photographers I admire and am inspired by. As I thought about which photographer and which specific photograph to write about, I was overwhelmed. I decided the photograph had to be a non-traditional one, and it had fit into my approach to photography and life. Joan Myers work immediately came to mind.
In the early 1970s, Myers turned to photography. She began as a large-format platinum-palladium printer, examining and photographing the relationships between people and the land. Her highly acclaimed work has been the focus of three Smithsonian exhibitions, more than fifty solo and eighty group shows, and eleven books. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Center for Creative Photography, Denver Art Museum, George Eastman House, High Museum of Art, Minneapolis Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Modern Art, Nevada Museum of Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Today she lives and maintains a studio in Santa Fe, NM focusing on the myth of the American West.
I recently attended Joan Myers’ exhibition at Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe, NM and was drawn to her Devil’s Highway landscape works. One particular photograph which gave me pause was “Wonder Valley, CA 2019.” As a photographer who travels to remote destinations in search of unique landscapes and curiosities, Joan’s “Wonder Valley” photograph has everything. The composition of the photograph leads the viewer through its depth, from the modern structure to the mountains in the background. Additionally, the details of the objects in the phone booth and costume are evident, but also in the more nuanced areas of the photograph, such as the shrubbery.