'Retracing Audubon: Contemporary Views' by Krista Elrick
"Retracing Audubon: Contemporary Views" at Northlight Gallery features the black and white photographs of ASU alumna Krista Elrick’s decade-long project following the path of renowned artist and naturalist John James Audubon.
In her travels following Audubon’s path, Elrick found rivers and wetlands scarred and shaped by humans, their waters dominated by commerce. “From the project’s beginning, Audubon’s biography dictated my fieldwork,” Elrick writes, “Photographing along the rivers and trails where he roamed led me through a journey into the unexpected. My reaction to the harsh differences between what he wrote and what I experienced continues to direct my creative inquiry.”
Elrick is a landscape photographer, a genre traditionally dominated by men. She is no Arizona Highways photographer, but it is to her advantage that we, the viewers, are so familiar with the “right way” to make a landscape photograph. Troubling the canon with her gender and her composited prints, she depicts overlapping images that remind the viewer they are looking at a constructed landscape. One that Northlight Gallery curator Liz Allen remarks, “represents loss of habitat, dwindling bird populations, but also beauty, resiliency and something worthy of preserving.”
In addition to Elrick's photographs the community gallery space will feature photographs and art pieces that represent the concurrent histories of Audubon's time and contemporary events including montage photographs of the Underground Railroad by ASU professor Stephen Marc and designs by local Diné artist Averian Chee who supervised the art at the Standing Rock Souix demonstrations last fall.
The exhibition runs Feb. 9–March 3. Join us on third Friday, Feb. 17 for "Retracing Audubon: A Confluence of Histories" when curator Liz Allen will moderate a conversation with Elrick, Marc, Standing Rock Sioux historian Jon Eagle and cultural awareness facilitator Marcia Warren Edelman. Gallery opens at 6 p.m., conversation begins at 6:30 p.m.
Northlight Gallery hours:
• noon–5 p.m. Thursday–Saturday
• 6–10 p.m. first and third Fridays
• closed Sunday–Wednesday and university holidays
Image credit: Krista Elrick, View of Missouri River from Standing Rock Souix, 2015