For immediate
release
FIRST BOOK TO BE PUBLISHED BY PHOTOGRAPHER DAVE ANDERSON
“This book’s title, ROUGH BEAUTY, conveys Anderson’s conviction
that the
hard scrabble lives of most of the residents of Vidor, Texas,
are worthy of
our attention, but it also conveys that he does not seek to
beautify their
lives by removing the crude edges.”
--Anne Wilkes Tucker, from the book’s introduction
(August 15, 2006 – New York) ROUGH BEAUTY, the first book by the
American
photographer, Dave Anderson (b. 1970), has been published by Dewi Lewis
Publishing, the prestigious art and photo publisher based
in the U.K. A Dutch-
language edition will be released by Mets & Schilt
Publishers in The Netherlands.
ROUGH BEAUTY (120 pages, 76 duotone photographs) has an
introduction by Anne
Wilkes Tucker, Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine
Arts, Houston.
Also included is an extensive interview Tucker conducted with
Anderson.
In November 2006, Anderson will have solo shows of ROUGH BEAUTY
in New York
(ClampArt) and San Francisco (Stephen Wirtz Gallery). In
2007-2008 he has
shows planned at the Griffin Museum of Photography in
Winchester,
Massachusetts; the Center for Photography at Woodstock in
upstate New York;
Watermark Fine Art Photographs & Books in Houston, Texas; the
Susan Spiritus
Gallery in Newport Beach, California; and Musee de la
Photographie,
Charleroi, Belgium.
Begun in the fall of 2003 and completed in early 2006 (after
fifty trips),
ROUGH BEAUTY is a black-and-white photographic documentation of
the people
and places of Vidor, Texas. A small town in southeastern Texas, Vidor is most
known for its long history as a KKK town.
But Anderson’s images explore the character and burden -- and
the resilience
and off-kilter beauty -- of a community branded by its history.
Vidor is
reviled for its history of Klan activities, but behind this
stereotype
lies a town with remarkable resiliency, struggling to create a new identity out
of a difficult past. His images show a hidden beauty that lies dormant even in the
roughest places.
MORE ABOUT DAVE ANDERSON
Now in his mid-30s, Anderson came to photography only after
working in other
fields. Born to Quaker parents and raised in East Lansing,
Michigan, he
studied history and film in college. He worked for President
Bill Clinton’s
communications and media affairs office, MTV’s nation-touring
"Choose or
Lose" bus recruiting young voters, and later for Madstone, a
maverick
independent movie studio in New York.
A chance sighting of a course catalog from the International
Center of
Photography (ICP) in New York led to classes and soon an
all-consuming
passion for photography. He pursued his studies under Keith
Carter at Lamar
University in Beaumont, Texas and Michael Kenna, via ICP, yet he
continues
to be primarily self-taught.
For the past three years, he has been a full-time fine art and
commercial
photographer. In that short time, he has been recognized as “one
of the
shooting stars of the American photo scene” by Germany’s
fotoMAGAZIN and
named to the “PDN 30” list by Photo District News, the much
anticipated
annual list of 30 emerging photographers as the “ones to watch.”
ROUGH
BEAUTY was the winner of the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s
2005 Project
Competition.
His work has been featured in numerous magazines (Esquire,
Stern, ESPN,
Photo District News, British Journal of Photography, B&W) and is
in the
collection of various museums (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;
George Eastman House, Art Museum of Southeast Texas; Worcester
Art Museum in Massachusetts; Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New
Orleans).
His work was recently featured in exhibitions in Toronto (Pitko
Gallery,
during the 2006 Contact Photo Festival) and New York (Alice
Austen House in
Staten Island, curated by Newsweek’s Paul Moakley and Photo
District News’
Anthony LaSala, and Jenkins Johnson Gallery in Chelsea).
A former New Yorker, he now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with
his wife.
MORE ABOUT ANNE WILKES TUCKER
Anne Wilkes Tucker is the founding Curator of Photography at the
Museum of
Fine Arts, Houston, where she has worked since 1976. The
museum's collection
now includes over 20,000 photographs made on all seven
continents and the
prestigious Manfred Heiting Collection. She has curated over
forty
exhibitions, including retrospectives for Robert Frank, Ray K.
Metzker,
Louis Faurer, Richard Misrach, and Brassaï, as well as surveys
of the Czech
avant-garde and the landmark exhibition The History of Japanese
Photography,
most of which have been accompanied by a publication.
Her essays have introduced the debut monographs of photographers
from Joel
Sternfeld to Alec Soth, as well as being published in many
different
magazines. She has lectured throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia,
and Latin
America and has received fellowships from the National Endowment
for the
Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well
as an
Alumnae Achievement award from Randolph Macon Woman's College.
In 2001, in
an issue devoted to “America’s Best,” TIME magazine honored her
as
“America’s Best Curator.”
- - - - - - - - - - -
BOOK SPECIFICATIONS
Title:
ROUGH BEAUTY
Photographs by:
Dave Anderson
Introduction and interview by:
Ann Wilkes Tucker
Retail price:
$40 U.S.
Canadian price upon request
Binding:
Hardcover
Trim size:
10 x 10 inches
Pages:
120
Illustrations:
76 duotones
Publication date:
Fall 2006
ISBN:
1-904587-29-1 1-904587-29-1
Publisher:
Dewi Lewis Publishing
http://www.dewilewispublishing.com/
U.S. distributor:
Consortium
http://www.cbsd.com/inventory.aspx?id=20137
Other editions/languages:
Dutch: Mets & Schilt Publishers, The Netherlands
http://www.metsenschilt.com/info/9053305122.html |
