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Geoff Winningham
Koelsch Gallery, Houston, Texas
Recommendation by Donna Tennant


Geoff Winningham, "Church, Montgomery County, AR" from "Of the Soil," 1981, archival inkjet print, 24 x 20".

Continuing through April 19, 2014

In 1980, Houston photographer Geoff Winningham and architect Cyrus Sutherland were commissioned by the First Federal Savings and Loan of Arkansas to photograph examples of southern American vernacular architecture in Arkansas. The project took a year, and after it was completed, Winningham put the collection aside and moved on to other projects. Three decades later Winningham revisited his Arkansas photographs and decided to return to the sites of the structures he had photographed. Unfortunately, many of the buildings had disappeared, but Winningham found no shortage of local people who remembered them. Now he has assembled these stories with the original photographs in a soon-to-be-published book, “Of the Soil.”

The 39 pieces in this exhibition include images of residences, churches, stores, barns, sheds, cabins, and grain silos. Small in size at 24 by 20 inches on average, the black-and-white prints are spare and elegant in their simplicity. Most do not include figures, but a few capture individuals posing on in front of them. In “Commercial Building, St. Joe (Searcy County) AR 1980” a man holds a goose in front of a simple stone structure, while signs on the building advertise baby ferrets and parakeets for sale. In six of the photographs, Winningham combines multiple images effectively into a single print, creating diptychs and triptychs.

Winningham has had a successful career capturing iconic images of the South, which include rituals such as high school football games or wrestling matches. In this case, he has focused his camera on buildings that most people would not even notice. By making them the center of attention, he reveals the beauty of these simple structures and ignites our interest in the people who owned or lived in them. “Of the Soil,” which is his eleventh book, tells the stories of these people.

Koelsch Gallery

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