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Larry Schwarm finds drama in an unlikely place: the
open fields of America’s farmland. His large, striking photographs
of controlled agricultural burns—the planned conflagrations
that clear the land after a harvest—look beyond documentary
tradition to refer to abstract and landscape painting.
The most dramatic images on view here were the nighttime
shots, with their flares of intense red and orange against inky,
nearly solid black backgrounds. In Horizon line near Strong
City, Kansas (2005), a thin line of gold flame pierces the
darkness, straight and hard-edged on the bottom and a little blurry
above, where its light is filtered through smoke. Reduced to its
essence, this landscape recalls the purity of a Mark Rothko painting.
Similarly, Furrows after sugar cane fire near Thibodaux, Louisiana
(2004) feels both of this world and ethereal. Other images resemble
tumultuous Romantic landscape paintings. Above the apocalyptic fires
of Burning sugar cane along Bayou Tesch, Louisiana (2004),
plumes of yellowish smoke rise against a blue sky like J. M. W.
Turner atmospherics.
These rich images marry the sweeping expansiveness
common in contemporary landscape photography with an almost abstract,
painterly quality. They are a rare achievement, both truthful and
beautiful.
This review originally appeared
in the May, 2006 issue of ARTnews.
Reprinted with permission.
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