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Artist Statement
I have been photographing the wheat fields in the southeastern corner of Washington for almost twenty years. It is my longest running project and forms a foundation for work made over my career. I was schooled in the discipline of photography initially formed in the Bauhaus in Germany before WW II. The wheat fields of the Palouse appeal to me because of the landscape’s minimal and reductive form while serving a clear function to use this land to make much of this nation’s wheat.
For questions about this or any other works of mine please refer to my website at: www.nealrantoul.com.
My photography is represented by 555 Gallery in Boston. Wheat, photographs by Neal Rantoul was published in 2012 and is available through the gallery.
Neal Rantoul is a career artist and teacher. He has taught photography since 1971. He is an emeritus professor and was head of the Photography Program at Northeastern University for thirty years and taught for thirteen years at Harvard University as well. He retired from Northeastern in January 2012. Rantoul has work in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston); the DeCordova Sculpture Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA); the Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA); the High Museum (Atlanta, GA); the Kunsthaus (Zurich, Switzerland); the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ); and Princeton University (NJ). He is the recipient of many awards and grants, including a Whiting Foundation Fellowship; a Lightwork residency (Syracuse, NY); RSDF, FDP and IDF grants from Northeastern University, a residency in Hofsos, Iceland in 2013; and he was a finalist twice for the Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Rantoul was an active member of the Board of Directors of the Photographic Resource Center for six years, serving on its Executive Committee for three years and is on the Board of Corporators at the Griffin Museum of Photography. Since retiring Rantoul has been teaching workshops, traveling, publishing and making new work. In the spring of 2013 he had simultaneous shows at the Danforth Museum in Framingham and another at Panopticon Gallery in Boston of new landscape work. A new book of his writing on his own and others’ photography is due out in late August, 2015, called: Neal Rantoul, Essays on Photography. Currently he is printing and assembling new work for an exhibition to open in September at 555 Gallery in Boston called “Monsters”, where his work is represented.
Mr. Rantoul has a website: www.nealrantoul.com. The site has a gallery of most of his work made over his career and also contains an active blog where he writes about his work, reviews other photographer’s shows and books published on photography.
