Artful Geneologies Render Them: Danville, Virginia 1976

Emmet Gowin made this black and white photograph, Artful Geneologies Render Them: Danville, Virginia. Looking at this image, I'm struck by the care that has been taken in placing the insects on each page of the old tome. They seem to have landed there with the precision of the artist’s eye—each insect carefully chosen, meticulously arranged. I think about Gowin as a young person, the child of missionaries in Panama, finding ways to respond to the world and his place in it, just as my own kids have done. There's something about the image that speaks to this collecting impulse, but also about how we classify and try to order our experience. Like the Surrealists, Gowin turns the natural world into a theatre of sorts. It invites multiple interpretations, and a playful sense of wonder. I think it speaks to the ongoing dialogue between artists across time and space. We take what we see and transform it.