“Excavation” Photographs by Gary Cawood: Dec. 2-Jan. 31. Opening reception Fri., Dec. 2, 6-8:30 p.m., Camerawork Gallery (Laundry Building, 515 Center St., Scranton).
Info: 570.510.5028,
cameraworkgallery.org
Archaeologists excavate artifacts and analyze environmental changes in order to understand ancient cultures. Comprehending our current culture while we are living it, where consumption and abandonment of material items are prevalent, is almost more of a challenge.
In an effort to put a poetic spin on the idea of an expendable environment made obvious by our consumer habits, photographer Gary Cawood has created an ongoing collection of photographs, titled “Excavation,” that will be on display at Camerawork inside the Marquis Gallery in Scranton. The show will open with a reception at 6 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2 and will run until Tuesday, Jan. 31.
“We easily throw things away, and we discard the environment,” Cawood said during a phone interview with the Weekender from Little Rock, Ark. “And we have the same idea to the land. I mean, people love to cut down trees, which I don’t understand. Look around, and your neighbor’s cutting a tree down for seemingly no reason. In our culture, we don’t really seem to have the respect for the natural environment that I think other cultures do.”
The still-life photos evolved from a venture Cawood, who is a photography professor at The University of Arkansas at Little Rock, made in 2006 to an excavated site called Big Rock Quarry.
“I had been up to this quarry site just hiking up there, and the rock formations were quite fascinating, so that’s what I started photographing,” he explained. “And ideas just sort of evolve.”
From there, Cawood started staging the photographs, adding material objects that were usually found on his morning walks around his neighborhood and, most recently, natural objects like leaves and rotten sticks.
Cawood’s work, with its juxtapositions of natural and unnatural objects, seems to be an effort to display the destruction our lifestyles impose on the environment.
“As a culture we’re so obsessed with buying things and consuming things, people buy things that they not only can’t afford but that they don’t even want,” he said. “Consuming is just a habit. It has nothing to do with real needs.”
Rolfe Ross, one of the three partners who manage Camerawork, noted that Cawood’s collection has significance in today’s cultural climate.
“I think that’s one of the things that he dwells on, is that we’re a consumer society, so it’s pick up and throw away,” Ross said. “And I think he tries to illustrate that. And yet the stuff that we throw away ultimately decays — a lot of it, anyway.”
In some of Cawood’s photographs, the decay that nature imposes on those items is apparent.
“And I might find something that I put there — and of course it’s only been six years — but even in a year’s time, the rain, wind, the oxidation, all these things, it’s constantly changing,” he said. “If you stage something, you go back, something will be a little different.”
Cawood, who will be in town for the opening, mentioned that he’s looking forward to being in Northeastern Pennsylvania so he can research another project he’s had on his mind.
“I’m interested in photographing in (NEPA),” he said. “So I hope to get some familiarity with the abandoned coal fields.”
Cawood seems to be drawn to the less conventionally beautiful aspects of the environment, in addition to the effects our actions as a society have on that environment. Through his work, he’s developed a new perspective.
“What I have personally gained (from photographing this collection), I think, is a greater appreciation of nature, the natural forces, and maybe to some degree how insignificant we are.”
He’s hoping those who stop in to see the exhibit experience the same sort of enlightenment.
“Photographing rocks and dirt, that’s really elemental stuff, and we’re part of something that’s much bigger,” Cawood explained. “And I hope that people looking at the show would just look more closely at what’s around them, recognize something like just the dirt below your feet is much more interesting and much more important than most people think it is.”
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