John Gossage (born 1946) is an American photographer working from Washington DC. His artist’s books and other publications use his photographs to explore the interplay between landscapes, urban environments, and the unseen or overlooked aspects of the places that are part of our everyday lives. His work not only captures the aesthetic of these locations but also invites viewers to consider the deeper stories and histories embedded within them. His work is noted for under-recognised elements of the urban environment such as abandoned tracts of land, debris and garbage, and graffiti, and themes of surveillance, memory and the relationship between architecture and power.
“I am a humanist, like most of us are, I can’t really step back to see the beauty and order of all this; closeness brings chaos and dread in this case. We have done harm to the place we live, I’m told, but it seems to me that we have done the most harm to ourselves and our best-laid plans. The planet has a plan to fix this, if we don’t.”
Should Nature Change 2019
I have absolutely no idea what I am doing any more and am totally sure of it. And that’s how it works’
Life and work
Gossage was born in Staten Island, New York City in 1946 and at an early age became interested in photography, leaving school at 16 and taking private instruction from Lisette Model, Alexey Brodovitch and Bruce Davidson. He later moved to Washington, D.C. to study, and subsequently received a grant from the Washington Gallery of Modern Art which allowed him to remain in the city and refine his photographic technique. He has shown his photographs in solo and group exhibitions since 1963.
After a number of years with Nazraeli Press his usual publisher is now Loosestrife Editions and Steidl. He has taught at the University of Maryland, College Park and curated several photographic exhibitions.
John Gossage’s first monograph, The Pond (1985), has been republished to great acclaim.
His other notable books include Stadt Des Schwarz (1987); LAMF (1987); There and Gone (1997); The Things That Animals Care About (1998); Hey Fuckface (2000); Snake Eyes (2002); Berlin in the Time of the Wall (2004); Putting Back the Wall (2007); The Secrets of Real Estate (2008); and The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler/Map of Babylon (2010); The Code ( 2011); She Called Me by Name (2012); The Actor (2011); Who Do You Love (2014); Nothing (2014); and pomodoii a grappolo (2015).
For Vimeo limited access versions of most of these books see: Vimeo Photobookstore.
For full list of his work see Wikipedia references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gossage#References
For details of books published by Steidtl: https://steidl.de/Artists/John-Gossage-0921316154.html
The Pond
Gossage photographed a small, unnamed pond between Washington, D.C., and Queenstown, Maryland, between 1981 and 1985.
The title was intended to recall Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, but Gossage advocated a more all-embracing view of the landscape, exploring the less idealized spaces that border America’s cities and suburbs. Although many of the images in The Pond appear unruly or uncared for, Gossage found moments of grace and elegance in even the most mundane of places.
A few years after being photographed the pond had dried up.
The pond is a literary monologue, a narrative landscape book, character development — all of it. … It’s set in Queenstown, but a few of the shots were actually taken in Berlin. I won’t tell which ones. I wanted to speak metaphorically about nature and civilization, which I realized halfway through my project. It’s a work of documentary fiction. The sites are universally trivial. There are many ponds, and that one may not even be there anymore.
The book is different [from the exhibition] in that it’s a narrative. You start at page one and move your way through. I was surprised because I really liked the show once I saw it. It’s given me new things to think about — things I haven’t digested yet.
John Gossage interviewed in Katherine Boyle (2021)
the sense one gets from the kind and placement of the trash around Gossage’s pond is that it wasn’t necessary to put it there, and the effect of doing so could not have been completely unanticipated; a few of the culprits may have been only willfully ignorant, but most were surely worse – those of us (I think we all do it, with varying degrees of indirection) who disfigure the landscape as a way of striking at life in general.…
Though Gossage’s study of nature in America is believable because it includes evidence of man’s darkness of spirit, it is memorable because of the intense fondness he shows for the remains of the natural world. He pictures everything – the loveliness of gravel, of sticks, of scum gleaning the water… He doesn’t even hesitate to photograph what we admire already (which is riskier, it being harder to awaken us to what we think we know), abruptly pointing his camera straight up at circling birds, and, later, over to a songbird on a wire.
Gossage does not use his survey of wood around a lake to stress an indictment; the off-road landscape through which he leads us is a mixture of the natural one and our junk, but his focus is not so much on the grotesqueries of the collage as on the reassurances of nature’s simplicities.
Adams, Robert (24 February 2013). “Robert Adams on John Gossage’s ‘The Pond’ (1986)”
- New York: Aperture, 1985. ISBN 9780893812065. With an essay by Denise Sines. Edition of 2000 copies.
- New York: Aperture, 2010. ISBN 9781597111324. With a preface by Toby Jurovics and an essay by Gerry Badger.
Exhibition: John Gossage: The Pond, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., 2010/2011
Should Nature Change?
It’s all about the ordinary now, the little things at the edge of your consciousness, the “signs” all around you.…
Everyone everywhere now has a small thing that has changed for them. The big things, those things that always happen to someone else, the other people, the ones on the news. The earthquakes, the floods, the fires, the disasters, are all still there in their grand scale. But it’s that the birds that used to come to your backyard are no longer there is what keeps you up at night.
John Gossage Artist’s Statement https://prix.pictet.com/cycles/disorder/john-gossage
What I have been photographing for [Should Nature Change] are moments when the normal slips, and the disorder starts. Subtle things that whisper to you that things have started to change and in all likelihood not for the best. Nature looks slightly different, it’s a bit warmer, there is a fire at the edge of town, a few of the people much younger than you have a different look in their eyes — remember the dinosaurs?
Black and white pictures of the country I come from and at this point in my life, work to understand.
The Times They Are A-Changin when I was younger I thought that song was about something different.
References
- Adams, Robert (24 February 2013). “Robert Adams on John Gossage’s ‘The Pond’ (1986)”. Retrieved 2021-07-20.
- Katherine Boyle (2021-12-23) [2010-09-02]. “Nature On Display: John Gossage, ‘The Pond,’ at Smithsonian American Art Museum”. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. ISSN 0190-8286. OCLC 1330888409.
- Looking Up Ben James – A Fable Book review by Gerry Badger https://www.1000wordsmag.com/john-gossage/
- Links to Interviews: https://americansuburbx.com/?s=John+Gossage
Photography Archives
- “Artist Info – John Gossage, 1946”. www.nga.gov. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
- “John Gossage”. The Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved 2020-05-12.
- “”Gossage””. The Menil Collection. Retrieved 2020-05-12.