July 15 – August 20, 2010
ClampArt is pleased to announce One Block, an exhibition of photographs by artist Dave Anderson organized to coincide with the release of his monograph of the same title from Aperture, and to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
One Block, Anderson’s third show at the gallery, is a powerful body of work which follows the reconstruction of a single New Orleans block in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, delivering a compelling portrait of the storm’s ongoing physical and psychological impact on the city and its residents. Using portraiture, still life, and abstract images, Anderson documents the evolution of both the street and its houses as residents literally rebuild their lives, exploring the very nature of community while testing its resilience.
Anderson’s compassionate treatment of the neighborhood’s straitened financial circumstances and its courageous reconstruction has drawn comparisons to coverage of the Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and other Farm Security Administration-funded photographers. Seventy years later, between the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and then the crippling recession, the stability and permanence of the American home is once again at stake.
Born in Michigan in 1970, Anderson was a relative latecomer to the world of photography. He first worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and then in the White House press office. He went on to be employed by MTV touring the country registering young voters for the program, “Choose or Lose.” After working on Al Gore’s presidential campaign, he joined a start-up film production company in New York City before hitting the road with his camera intending to document obscure parts of America that had eluded him while traveling cross-country for MTV. He had only one rule for his road trip—no driving on any road with more than two lanes.
Called “one of the shooting stars of the American photo scene” by Germany’s fotoMAGAZIN, Anderson was named the winner of the 2005 Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts; the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, Texas; the University of Louisville Photographic Archive, Louisville, Kentucky; and the Marguilies Collection, Miami, Florida.