Landscapes Explore Places that Shaped Photographers' Formative Years

A photographer whose landscape-savvy work largely explores the personal and cultural mythology of places he roamed as a youth will display his photographs from Jan. 19 to Feb. 27 in the Southern Light Gallery at Amarillo College.

Adam Neese, who spent his formative years in Grapevine, Texas, has exhibited his photography extensivelyfrom Minnesotas Rourke Art Museum to Amsterdams De Fotohal.

Neese definitive exhibit is A Known World, which he refers to as a photographic survey and archive of memories of growing up in North Texas.

Neese writes: To the observant wandering child, the landscape is a place of fantasy and fame. With this nave view, the size of the world is scaled down; a field, a stand of trees, or an old road can hold the magic and possibility of the American West in 19th-century frontier days.

Using a large format camera, he continues, and capturing with highly stable sheet film, I have created a visual archive with physical negatives to investigate ideas of memory, identity, and place. The photographs are of landscapes in which my friends and I had specific experiences.

Neese obtained a bachelors degree in fine arts from the School of Art Institute of Chicago, then earned a master of fine arts degree from the University of North Texas, where he currently serves as a visiting assistant professor of photography.

The Southern Light Gallery is located on the first floor of the Lynn Library on ACs Washington Street Campus. The gallery is free and open to the public.

For more information about the photo display or the gallery, contact Rene West, assistant professor of photography at Amarillo College, at 806-345-5654 or rwest@actx.edu.