Photographer Dan Gottlieb, an afficionado of America’s public lands, was invited recently by FRANK Gallery in Carrboro, N.C. to contribute to an exhibition on the topic. He selected six images to display through May 17, giving him just enough time to prepare for a two-month artist’s residency in the Blue Mountains of Australia, starting in June.

When were these images created?

These six landscapes were selected from work spanning about ten years to highlight the value of national and state parks and forests- publicly protected lands.

These pictures originate in American parks and forests that I’ve enjoyed and photographed. For more than a century, we, as a nation, have invested in the preservation and protection of many of our most wild and spectacular regions – not always without dissent, but with overwhelming popularity among Americans and global visitors. I have discovered some of my most indelible images walking along the Eno River, escaping work trips to Mt. Baker’s rainforest-like high trails, treks in the Rockies and Berkshires, and snowy hikes to witness the giant sequoias after climate-impacted wildfires ravaged ancient stands.

Where?

Locally, along the Eno River; Down East in the swamps near Edenton, NC; Up north in the Berkshire Mountains; Out West in the Rocky Mountain National Park and Sequoia National Park.

Their design intent?

To slow viewers into the frame, as I slow my body and breath with the environment.

Their environmental/political intent?

The selection of pictures is intended specifically to highlight American public lands, and the current regime’s targeted fiscal policies against them – and anything that smacks of support for sustainability, research, and preservation.

A different kind of adversary now threatens to compromise these and other American wildernesses. The current federal administration is hellbent on opening protected areas to extraction for profit, beginning with Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  National Park budgets have been slashed for research, personnel, and maintenance. The funding assault is only beginning. Federal grants to states for sustainability in all its forms are falling like dominoes, even though, in 2024, the NPS reported a record 331 million visits.  Many park managers do not know how they will keep parks safe and open to the public with diminished resources and fewer qualified people, while the risk of future wildfires escalates.

I continue to find inspiration in protected forests here and abroad and hope we Americans loudly voice support to protect them from thoughtless greed.

Scale and proportion.

I often try to, in a formal sense, to dissolve scale within the picture frame. Meaning, I want to be within the environment. Figure-ground relationships are frequently blurred in this context.

Did you frame them? If so, how?

My process requires no protective glass. I simply mount them myself into an ordered cut frame. I have used white frames for many years now.

Color palette?

Because I paint behind the printed image – which is on a clear panel – their luminance is influenced by the color of paints I use (because there is no white in the print). Several of these pictures have silver or gold paint as a first layer, which radiates depth.

Your Technique used in shooting them?

Often, my camera technique is to use exposures about the length of a breath, as I move through the environment. This means slowing down my pace, the camera, and my hands as I breathe through the exposures to come closer to where I am.

For more, go here.