Till the Cows Come Home - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3939583871 ISBN 13: 9783939583875

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag, 2008

Synopsis

"Dan Nelken’s oddly affecting portraits of half-shorn sheep, gawky adolescents clutching prize rabbits, and teenage beauty queens show that the down-home county fair pooh-poohed for offering both funnel cake and motion sickness is a bastion of tradition, knowledge, and community that we're often quick to overlook." Dwell Magazine

Dan Nelken’s delightful and insightful portfolio Till the Cows Come Home is a selection of county fair portraits. It is one of those rare bodies of work that combines a surface ease of viewing with a passionate depth of character and feeling. If one chooses just to enjoy the subjects, then Nelken’s images are seemingly direct and uncomplicated portraits of the participants in some of the thousands of county fairs that make up American rural life. Simultaneously, however, they possess a depth that Walt Whitman first noted over a century before: I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained / I stand and look at them long and long.’ ” Roy Flukinger, in The British Journal of Photography

It still exists: the small family farm with its own traditions, but it is threatened with extinction. In rural communities and at county fairs across the United States, one can still find it. Dan Nelken, in his portraiture, has recorded the essence of these time-honored ways of living and working. Since 2000, Nelken photographed county fairs throughout New York State, drawn by their simplicity, their moments of tranquility amidst the festivity, and their link to the past. He searched to convey the intimacy, rhythm, and flow of the essence of a cultural phenomenon that is slowly disappearing.

Dan Nelken is a photographer based in New York City. His award-winning work has been exhibited and published in the United States and abroad.

About this title

About the Author

Dan Nelken, a commercial and art photographer based in New York City, studied graphic design before veering into film and photography. His award-winning work has been exhibited, collected, and published in the USA and abroad. As Senior Curator of Photography & Film at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Flukinger is in charge of the development, administration and application of the collections. He lectures and publishes in such fields as: regional, cultural and contemporary photography, the history of art and photography, and film. He has produced nearly fifty exhibitions ranging from classical photohistory to contemporary photography.

Review

The British Journal of Photography, May 2006

About this edition

• Publisher: Kehrer Verlag
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 3939583871
• ISBN 13: 9783939583875
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 120