ABSTRACT

Peter Goin and the Photography of Environmental Change narrates the forty-year quest of award-winning and internationally exhibited contemporary photographer Peter Goin to document human-altered landscapes across America and beyond. It is a collaborative work between an artist and a literary critic, a retrospective of an accomplished environmental photographer, and an innovative education in visual reading.

Enduring howling wind, pounding rain, and blistering sun, Goin bears witness to radioactive landscapes, abandoned mines, simulated swamps, rechanneled rivers, controlled burns, overgrown ruins, industrialized agriculture, shrinking reservoirs, feral spaces in the city, architected wilderness, sacred wastelands, contested borderlands, and more. Based on more than seventy hours of taped interviews with the artist spanning over a decade, trailblazing ecocritic Cheryll Glotfelty narrates the arc of Goin's career, sharing excerpts from their conversations that reveal his brilliant mind and piquant personality while situating his work within the broader context of environmental thinkers.

This beautifully illustrated volume, with 200 images in color and black-and-white showcasing Goin’s work, will be a fascinating and insightful read for upper-level students, academics, and researchers in photography, environmental history and culture, landscape studies, and environmental humanities.

chapter 1|10 pages

Introduction

Leave your shoes at the door

chapter 2|17 pages

Biographical sketch

It's not about me

chapter 3|7 pages

On the road

chapter 4|14 pages

Evolving landscapes

chapter 5|10 pages

American ruins

chapter 6|10 pages

Urban wild

chapter 7|26 pages

A line on the landscape

chapter 8|21 pages

Landscapes of fear

chapter 10|26 pages

Landscape is architecture

chapter 11|27 pages

Humanature

chapter 12|13 pages

The postmodern West

chapter 13|16 pages

Sensual anthropomorphs

chapter 14|18 pages

Arid waters

chapter 15|26 pages

Changing mines

chapter 16|21 pages

Water into light

chapter 17|25 pages

Ancestral artisans

chapter 18|34 pages

New nature

chapter 19|29 pages

Artifacts of the future

chapter 20|7 pages

Epilogue

Goin home