Altered Landscapes: The Photographs of John Pfahl (Untitled Series, No. 26)

Friends of Photography / Robert Freidus Gallery [Published date: 1981]. Soft cover, 56 pp. Untitled 26: This publication is the 26th in a series of publications on serious photography by The Friends of Photography. [From Introduction] One of the concepts regarding photography and the making of photographs that has taken the longest to be realized and appreciated is that of intentional creation. Early in this century the pictorialists began to articulate the inherent linkage between the act of photographing, the sense of responsibility that falls on photographers because of their pictures and the sensuality of the pictures themselves. These are the principles that have become the fundamental bases of modern photography. Further, photographs that were once derided as illustrative are today not so disrespected because this term is no longer reserved to describe work reinforcing traditional regimes. It now refers to that providing an illustration or a kind of mechanical for the activity Edward Hall identifies above. The art of successful photography has once again come to be concerned with artifice and, like the best writers of literature, the goal of a contemporary photographer like John Pfahl is not to turn viewers into rereaders but into readers. John Pfahl was born in New York in 1939 and grew up in rural New Jersey. He began his interest in photography at Syracuse University, where he was a student enrolled in a program of advertising and graphic design. Importantly, his earliest work was in color. Following two years in the Army he worked for commercial photographers in New York City and in California.