Minor White, Portland, 1939, gelatin silver print, Courtesy of the Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration. Commissioned through the New Deal art projects, public domain, L42.2.13
Fresh this week is a new rotation of Minor White’s classic early images from Oregon — which were commissioned as part of FDR’s New Deal programs — and made before White rose to Photo God status by helping to found Aperture alongside Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and others.
A Harley Cowan image from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Also, this month’s Brown Bag Lecture Talk series is on May 16th from noon to 1 p.m, a presentation of the Portland Art Museum’s Photography Council sponsored by Pro Photo Supply. Portland photographer Harley Cowan will talk about his large-format work documenting nuclear production sites.
“I grew up in Richland, Washington next to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation,” Cowan wrote, and his interest led to six years working in nuclear industry. Now a practicing architect as well as a photographer, Cowan travels to “historically significant but largely unrecorded sites in the Pacific Northwest in order to create photography eligible for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).”
“They continue to follow strict guidelines for black & white, large format, film photography. As a contemporary photographer, it is an intriguing starting point.”
