Paul Cooklin

Edition 1/10 - Malecon, Havana, Cuba Photograph, 2010

2010

Framed minimalist aerial landscape photograph of apple trees and shadows against bright white snow 'Apple Orchard and Shadows Near Sodus, NY', 2011 Archival digital print, Edition of 25 (#153) Image size 19.3 x 29 inches with 2 inch border 27.5 x 36.5 inches in black frame with 8-ply mat and non-glare glass Also available in the following sizes (unframed): Image 19.3 x 29 inches with 2 inch border $2000 Image size 31 x 39 inches with 2 inch border $3200 Image size 38.5 x 48 inches with 2 inch border $4500 Image size 40 x 60 inches with 2 inch border $6800 The aerial photographs of pilot and photographer John Griebsch capture natural and man-made land forms from a bird's-eye view and turn them into art. Employing his mature and professional sense of composition, gained from a photography career that began at the age of 12, Griebsch here photographs an apple orchard from above near Sodus, NY. The trees cast dramatic shadows on the bright white snow, creating beautiful contrast. When seen from above, the shadows and tree's stark black forms against the white snow can be likened to a minimalist abstract painting. Artist statement: My aerial photographs present a sense of selective design applied to an extremely small and specific area of the vast landscape over which I fly. I find the need to make geographical sense of the earth, as well as the need to make visual sense of a photograph. I work with ambiguity of scale, the graphic quality of nature and with the hand of man upon the landscape. My images have an abstract and often painterly quality. They are at once factual and interpretive. Familiar landscapes take on a fresh context when airborne. The images require the confluence of several factors. There is the subject – a minuscule segment of the landscape that has captured my interest due to its sense of pattern, order or disarray. There is the essential contribution of light. There is the position and altitude of the airplane, and there is a need to capture the stillness and composition of the moment while moving over the subject at more than seventy miles per hour. My earliest aerial photographs were of ice and farmland, made close to home. The scope of the work opened up on solo flights across the continent in my vintage 1952 Cessna 170B. Those flights are made to find images of landscapes on a grander scale as well as unfamiliar opportunities to find images that take in a small detail. In my most recent work I’ve discovered what might be regarded as historical or documentary themes – some of the images of factories and quarries present relics of the country’s industrial past, while my newer images of the landscape and agriculture denote changes in the scale of farming and open space. The existing body of work, titled Aerias is comprised of more than two hundred images. Collections of my images have been placed in corporate and business settings and in private collections. I started photographing when I was twelve years old. My father taught me to fly when I was fourteen years old. Before taking off on my first solo flight, he admonished me not to go out of sight of the airport. I was soon out of his view and yet from where I was, the airport was always in sight. Such are the perceptions of a photographer who is airborne. More about the artist: Resume John Griebsch is an aerial photographer and pilot whose aerial landscapes depict natural and man-made landforms. His images of the American landscape have been made from his vintage Cessna 170, in which he has logged more than 100,000 miles. At present there are 300 images in his series of work, titled, AERIAS. Representation Iris Gallery, Boston & Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Aspen, Colorado Carrie Haddad Photographs, Hudson, New York The Art Registry, Washington, DC Chicago Art Source, Chicago, Illinois June Bateman Fine Art, New York, New York Estro Photographics, New York, New York Susan Spiritus...

A vast landscape of New York City is accented with a single figure. The striking composition is created when two small areas of color pop off of a white and gray background. The re...