DNJ Gallery has announced an upcoming exhibition, “Vanishing America,” presenting the photographs and a new book of the same title by Michael Eastman. This monograph will be available for purchase at DNJ Gallery and Eastman will be signing copies at the opening reception.

Michael Eastman’s large-scale images record the common, everyday places which once made up the greater American landscape. Eastman’s photographs do not depict humans, but nevertheless are about people. He captures the restaurants, movie theaters, bars, bowling alleys, city halls, hotels and the outskirts of the community – focusing on the public space. Eastman is firmly committed to portraying the legacy of small communities. He preserves the vanishing townscape.

One of Eastman’s major influences, Eugene Atget, a painter turned photographer, believed he was the author of his environment. He illustrated the late 19th century storefronts of Paris to record them for the future generations. Similarly, another one of his influences, Walker Evans, was known for concentrating on the ordinary. Evans noticed those common places that are not missed until they are no longer there. In this vein, “Vanishing America” celebrates the forgotten, preserving the rich visual relics still remaining, and holding evidence to our collective past.

In 2003, Eastman began his three and a half-year project, traveling across the United States six times. Shooting with his 4×5 camera has made him a keen observer of the world, and given way to a developed poetic vision of what a more superficial observer would consider mundane architecture. Eastman’s images have a quiet painterly attention to light and space, which also translate beautifully to the colors of film. “Vanishing America” reveals the hidden jewels of the rural American buildings, recalling a history that in modern times has often been traded for corporate chains and mass uniformity. “The heart of our country is not along its highways, but in the small towns that dot the map along the way,” Eastman says about his work. There is a definite nostalgia for a part of our past slowly being demolished, but Eastman chooses to preserve what remains, taking subtle care as if he were an archeologist uncovering a long, lost civilization.

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