William Christenberry

Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity of the American South, focusing his attention on Hale County, Alabama, from which he hails. Although Christenberry is most often associated with and recognized as a pioneer in the field of American color photography, his vision is multifaceted and rendered through an unorthodox mix of media that includes sculpture, drawing, painting, and found-object assemblage. To understand the full scope and complexity of his personal investigation of the South and his own heritage, it is essential to consider these various media together. Christenberry's theme, however, is singular: the history, the very story of place, is at the heart of his project. An affection for literature and the distinctly southern tradition of oral history informs his work. Christenberry's poetic documentation of vernacular architecture, signage, and landscape captures moments of quiet beauty in a sometimes mythic terrain that, with its worn iconography and buildings turned ramshackle, evokes the form and power of the passage of time. Since relocating to Washington, D.C., in 1968, Christenberry has dutifully returned to photograph the same locations annually - the green barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others - fulfilling a personal ritual and documenting the physical changes wrought by the passing of a year. More than half the work in this comprehensive survey of Christenberry's oeuvre is previously unpublished, including a stunning selection of his never-before-seen photographs shot in Kodachrome. Publication will coincide with a major exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum opening in the summer of 2006 and a simultaneous show at the Aperture Gallery.

About the Author :
WILLIAM CHRISTENBERRY (b. 1936) has been a professor at the Corcoran College of Art and Design since 1968. He is world renowned for his photography, sculpture, drawings, and paintings that pay tribute to his roots in rural Alabama. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ELIZABETH BROUN is the Margaret and Terry Stent Director, Smithsonian American Art Museum. WALTER HOPPS (d. 2005) was founding director of the Menil Collection, Houston, where he was also curator of twentieth-century art. ANDY GRUNDBERG is a critic, curator, and teacher in Washington, D.C., where he is the Administrative Chair of Photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Crisis of the Real, a collection of his essays, was published by Aperture in an expanded edition in 1999. HOWARD N. FOX is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.