Presentation, Prints on Display, Book signing

Portland Art Museum Comes to the Columbia Center for the Arts

Wild Beauty : Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867–1957   presents many of the most beautiful, most telling, and most important images in the history of the Pacific Northwest.

Unique geography, advancing technology, abundant talent, and changes in thought about making photographs as art are all chronicled in the exhibition, a collection of over 200 prints at the Portland Art Museum through January 11th.

On Wednesday, December 10th, Terry Toedtemeier, PAM's curator of photography, and John Laursen, co-author of the exquisitely produced large-format book which accompanies the exhibition, will bring the history, the awe-inspiring  stories, and the images themselves to the CCA Theater. 

A reception begins at 6pm with books available for purchase & signing.  At 7pm, Terry Toedtemeier & John Laursen deliver an entertaining & enlightening talk, illustrated by slides on the theater's 16' film screen.  More time for booksigning to follow. 

Terry & John will be bringing with them several large Carleton Watkins prints that will be on display that evening only, as will original books of Benjamin Gifford prints loaned by the Hood River County History Museum so that viewers can get nose-to nose with the images.

This is a free event, though donations are always appreciated.

Don't miss this chance to see some of the best of the Portland Art Museum on your own doorstep! 

To learn more about the book, visit the Northwest Photography Archive website.

 

The Portland Art Museum Exhibition

Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867–1957
From rock formations to waterfalls, vast curves and bends to massive mountain views, the Columbia River Gorge’s beauty has been an inspiration to professional and amateur photographers alike for nearly 150 years.

The images in Wild Beauty, a 90-year photographic survey of the Columbia River Gorge, comprise some of the most striking and poignant pictures taken of the area from 1867 to 1957.

The exhibition, consisting of more than 200 photographs, is a historical journey through unique geography, advancing technology, and abundant talent, chronicling the beauty and changing character of this dramatic passage of river.

Beginning with legendary landscape photographer Carleton Watkins and including work from several photographers drawn to the region when the railroad made the Gorge more accessible, Wild Beauty highlights the growing human impact on the Gorge through transportation advances, tourism, and dam construction.

Learn more about the exhibit by visiting the Portland Art Museum website.

 

What Reviewers are Saying

Wild Beauty represents, in the words of one reviewer, “a culmination of decades of research, exhibition, and total immersion in the geology, history, and photography of the Columbia River Gorge.”

• The photographs have been meticulously restored and are reproduced in four-color process to capture the coloration and tonal values of albumen prints, gelatin silver prints, platinum prints, hand-colored photographs, and Kodachromes.
• Features images from the 1860s to the 1957 completion of The Dalles Dam, which drowned Celilo Falls and the historic site where Indians had fished for millennia.
• Appeals to readers interested in the history of the Columbia River, the photography of the developing American West, and the stunning beauty of the gorge.
• Selected by the Oregon Arts Commission to receive the American Masterpieces Initiative grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Oregon’s official book in the Pavilion of the States at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., in Sept 2008.
• Publication coincides with opening of a major new exhibition of the photographs at the Portland Art Museum.
• Featured in the 2008 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association holiday catalog.