DESCRIPTION
There is a certain magic to the people of the American Midwest.
Honest. Modest. Understated. Sometimes unappreciated. Often overlooked.
I created Midwest Memoir as a way to help others see the Midwest in a whole new light. The Midwest in which I was raised. The Midwest that shaped my experiences and my artistic aesthetic. The Midwest the way I will always remember it, even though it continues to change and disappear around me.
I think of the Midwest as being classic and timeless in nature. Therefore, I approached this project from a time-honored “straight photography” perspective in the spirit of Group f/64 and gave the work a modernist character with a strong formalist dimension. My approach was informed by the work of mid-century modernist photographers such as Adams, Weston, White, Strand and Evans.
My work was also strongly influenced by the American Regionalism movement and the work of artists who portrayed the American heartland, including Wood, Benton, Curry, Wyeth and Hopper.
To support this modernist aesthetic, I utilized a square format as an homage to the timeless work created with medium format Rolleiflex and Hasselblad cameras of that era.
AUTHOR
Michael Knapstein (b.1956) is a fine-art photographer who has earned international recognition for his insightful and nuanced visual exploration of the American Midwest. A Wisconsin native, he now lives in Middleton, Wisconsin with his wife, Annette.
Photolucida (Portland, OR) has named him a Critical Mass Finalist three times. The Pollux Awards (Kent, England) named him their Grand Prize Winner and the Barcelona Foto Biennale named him the International Landscape Photographer of the Year.
Knapstein’s photographs have been widely published and exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including Aberystwyth, Bath, Belfast, East Sussex, London, Oxford and Stafford (all UK), Arles and Paris (France), Barcelona and Malaga (Spain), Moscow and Novorossiysk (Russia), Buenos Aries (Argentina), Berlin (Germany), Simferopol (Crimea), Sydney (Australia) and Tokyo (Japan).
In the United States, his work has been exhibited in New York (New York), Carmel, Half Moon Bay, Long Beach, Modesto, Oceanside, San Diego and San Francisco (all California), Essex Junction and Middlebury (Vermont), , Albuquerque (New Mexico), Dubuque (Iowa), Fort Collins (Colorado), Johnson City (Texas), Naples (Florida), Portland (Oregon) as well as Madison, Milwaukee, Prairie du Sac, Racine, Spring Green, Stevens Point and West Bend (all Wisconsin).
