On July 14, 1820 Edwin James performed the first documented climb to
the summit of PIKES PEAK. July 14, 2020 will mark the bicentennial
year of Edwin’s achievement. Mark James is Edwin’s ancestor. The
COMMON GROUND IN THE TITLE IS BASED, not on ancestral provenance, but
on hiking and standing on the summit of PIKES PEAK EXACTLY 200 YEARS
AFTER EDWIN. Mark has been photographing PIKES PEAK AND THE
SURROUNDING AREA TO CREATE A TIMELESS, unspoiled landscape likely
encountered by Edwin James and the Major Stephen H. Long Expedition to
the Rocky Mountain West. In this program you will relive the adventure
of Edwin James and the Major Long Expedition through story and
photographs.Photographing in black and white, Mark uses a pinhole
camera which produces a soft and ethereal image. The photographs avoid
mere documentary. Rather, the photographs erase the fine details of
the landscape while leaving behind form and light. Mark James has been
a photographer for over 50 years. He has served as a photojournalist,
documentarian, commercial photographer, gallery owner, curator,
landscape photographer, and presently, an emerging historian. Since
1995, Mark’s landscape photography has been closely associated with
the underlying ideas of photography as well as the history of American
Western expansion. In 1995, Mark was awarded a residency at Rocky
Mountain National Park and thus began his present field of study:
black & white landscape photography using a pinhole camera – a study
that has spanned twenty-four years. Mark exhibits almost exclusively
in museums. Currently, an exhibit titled _Remnants of the West: Edward
Curtis and Mark James was curated by the Dubuque Museum of Art _and is
on tour. Twenty photographs from Mark James are paired with twenty
photographs of the legendary photographer, Edwin Curtis.
hiking
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05/03/2020 Last update