Both Directions at Once: the photographs of Jeffrey Rothstein
By Elizabeth Brundage
I met Jeffrey Rothstein at Hampshire College when we were freshman. In those days, Hampshire was a sprawling, minimalist campus in the middle of an apple orchard in Amherst, MA. Jeffrey was a tall, lanky kid with shoulder length hair and the kind of confidence that comes from knowing and trusting yourself. He’d grown up in the Caribbean and Northampton, and attended high school in London, which, I imagine, contributed to his unique and original world view. At Hampshire, he worked with two incredible professors, Jerome Liebling, and Elaine Mayes, both photographers and lifelong mentors. Jeffrey and I shared a few classes together and became friends; we were intellectual compatriots. He was one of the very few people I could talk to about my own work – and we were each of us instinctual, passionate, and extremely motivated. We were part of a community of students that believed entirely in process, in developing a dialogue that allowed us to communicate how we saw the world, and what it meant to us. I believe that this was fundamental to Jeffrey’s progression as an artist, as it was to mine as a writer, and resonates even now in our work. Because our conversation was really about freedom. The freedom to be ourselves. To make work that reflected that determination. Work that attempted at honesty and rebellion. A way of seeing, a reckoning, a critical reflection of the times. As young artists, we were encouraged not to depend on a standard curriculum but to teach ourselves, pursuing intellectual nutrition wherever we could find it, to be exacting, innovative, and curious, the very same tenets we rely upon today. Jeffrey’s work has always pushed boundaries and shattered assumptions. When he reaches an artistic plateau, he climbs even higher, where the heady altitude makes his heart pound.
In his new and magnificent collection, Both Directions at Once, Jeffrey invites the viewer’s gaze on an existential journey, a visual wandering of rock and sky, a pageantry of color that exists exclusively in nature. The title was inspired by a conversation between John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter about their music going “both directions at once.” Welcoming a personal challenge, Jeffrey abandoned his usual chronological thinking about his work, allowing himself the agency of fluidity, starting in the middle or the end of a project and working back to its inception, so long as each symphonic element shared one resounding refrain. Music is a guide for Jeffrey – the music he claims to hear in the desert, the trembling of the sand, wind, the formations of stone, and a mental soundtrack by Brian Eno. Each photograph shares a consensus of painterly and photographic mastery, dividing rock and sky into planes of color and vivid texture, reminiscent of the paintings of Maynard Dixon. So too, Jeffrey’s photographs gift the viewer with an experience of open space, a freedom typically reserved for birds and ghosts. Drawing on the historic, iconic traditions pioneered by Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, and, more recently, Richard Misrach and David Benjamin Sherry, we have been granted an exclusive vision of the rugged Utah horizon, bearing witness to an ancient and miraculous landscape unlike any other on this earth. The rock formations – arches, pinnacles, canyons, and spires – are majestic, mysterious, biblical. A world unto itself, sacred, vigorously beautiful. Jeffrey’s images are at once otherworldly and recognizable – the blue buttes of Utah might be the strange, lonesome formations on the surface of Mars. Even in their remarkable scope, the images feel intimate, hallucinatory, transformative. Not beauty simply for the sake of beauty, but an undercurrent of power that is open to interpretation, a kind of soulful reckoning at our own smallness in the scheme of things. An invitation to arrive in the boundless space of the photograph, to encounter a stoic, sacred, demanding landscape, and the prayers that shimmer there, under all that sky.
Oblique Strategies – A review -Gilda Williams
Rothstein’s series emerges as a striking tableau in the contemporary photographic landscape, where the boundaries of photography and abstract art not only meet but merge. Each piece in “Oblique Strategies” is a testament to Rothstein’s daring to reimagine the photographic medium. His approach is a dance of geometric abstraction, where shapes and forms pirouette across the traditional photographic canvas, challenging the viewer’s notions of reality and representation.
The series resonates with a minimalist yet bold aesthetic, reminiscent of the geometric abstraction movement. Rothstein, in this venture, seems to be conversing with the history of abstract art, nodding to its past yet firmly planting his work in the contemporary. His photographs in “Oblique Strategies” become a visual playground where the purity of form, the elegance of lines, and the audacity of color coalesce into a harmonious yet provocative narrative.
Rothstein’s work is not just a visual feast but an intellectual puzzle. Each photograph beckons the viewer to delve deeper, to unravel the layers of meaning and symbolism hidden within these deceptively simple compositions. “Oblique Strategies” stands as a bold statement in Rothstein’s oeuvre, a series that defies easy categorization and continually asks the viewer to reconsider the potential and purpose of photography in the modern art world.
In summary, Rothstein’s “Oblique Strategies” is a compelling fusion of concept and medium, a series that encapsulates the artist’s relentless pursuit of pushing the photographic medium beyond its conventional boundaries. It’s a vivid reminder of the transformative power of art and its ability to continually reshape our understanding of the world around us.
By Elizabeth Brundage
I met Jeffrey Rothstein at Hampshire College when we were freshman. In those days, Hampshire was a sprawling, minimalist campus in the middle of an apple orchard in Amherst, MA. Jeffrey was a tall, lanky kid with shoulder length hair and the kind of confidence that comes from knowing and trusting yourself. He’d grown up in the Caribbean and Northampton, and attended high school in London, which, I imagine, contributed to his unique and original world view. At Hampshire, he worked with two incredible professors, Jerome Liebling, and Elaine Mayes, both photographers and lifelong mentors. Jeffrey and I shared a few classes together and became friends; we were intellectual compatriots. He was one of the very few people I could talk to about my own work – and we were each of us instinctual, passionate, and extremely motivated. We were part of a community of students that believed entirely in process, in developing a dialogue that allowed us to communicate how we saw the world, and what it meant to us. I believe that this was fundamental to Jeffrey’s progression as an artist, as it was to mine as a writer, and resonates even now in our work. Because our conversation was really about freedom. The freedom to be ourselves. To make work that reflected that determination. Work that attempted at honesty and rebellion. A way of seeing, a reckoning, a critical reflection of the times. As young artists, we were encouraged not to depend on a standard curriculum but to teach ourselves, pursuing intellectual nutrition wherever we could find it, to be exacting, innovative, and curious, the very same tenets we rely upon today. Jeffrey’s work has always pushed boundaries and shattered assumptions. When he reaches an artistic plateau, he climbs even higher, where the heady altitude makes his heart pound.
In his new and magnificent collection, Both Directions at Once, Jeffrey invites the viewer’s gaze on an existential journey, a visual wandering of rock and sky, a pageantry of color that exists exclusively in nature. The title was inspired by a conversation between John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter about their music going “both directions at once.” Welcoming a personal challenge, Jeffrey abandoned his usual chronological thinking about his work, allowing himself the agency of fluidity, starting in the middle or the end of a project and working back to its inception, so long as each symphonic element shared one resounding refrain. Music is a guide for Jeffrey – the music he claims to hear in the desert, the trembling of the sand, wind, the formations of stone, and a mental soundtrack by Brian Eno. Each photograph shares a consensus of painterly and photographic mastery, dividing rock and sky into planes of color and vivid texture, reminiscent of the paintings of Maynard Dixon. So too, Jeffrey’s photographs gift the viewer with an experience of open space, a freedom typically reserved for birds and ghosts. Drawing on the historic, iconic traditions pioneered by Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, and, more recently, Richard Misrach and David Benjamin Sherry, we have been granted an exclusive vision of the rugged Utah horizon, bearing witness to an ancient and miraculous landscape unlike any other on this earth. The rock formations – arches, pinnacles, canyons, and spires – are majestic, mysterious, biblical. A world unto itself, sacred, vigorously beautiful. Jeffrey’s images are at once otherworldly and recognizable – the blue buttes of Utah might be the strange, lonesome formations on the surface of Mars. Even in their remarkable scope, the images feel intimate, hallucinatory, transformative. Not beauty simply for the sake of beauty, but an undercurrent of power that is open to interpretation, a kind of soulful reckoning at our own smallness in the scheme of things. An invitation to arrive in the boundless space of the photograph, to encounter a stoic, sacred, demanding landscape, and the prayers that shimmer there, under all that sky.
Oblique Strategies – A review -Gilda Williams
Rothstein’s series emerges as a striking tableau in the contemporary photographic landscape, where the boundaries of photography and abstract art not only meet but merge. Each piece in “Oblique Strategies” is a testament to Rothstein’s daring to reimagine the photographic medium. His approach is a dance of geometric abstraction, where shapes and forms pirouette across the traditional photographic canvas, challenging the viewer’s notions of reality and representation.
The series resonates with a minimalist yet bold aesthetic, reminiscent of the geometric abstraction movement. Rothstein, in this venture, seems to be conversing with the history of abstract art, nodding to its past yet firmly planting his work in the contemporary. His photographs in “Oblique Strategies” become a visual playground where the purity of form, the elegance of lines, and the audacity of color coalesce into a harmonious yet provocative narrative.
Rothstein’s work is not just a visual feast but an intellectual puzzle. Each photograph beckons the viewer to delve deeper, to unravel the layers of meaning and symbolism hidden within these deceptively simple compositions. “Oblique Strategies” stands as a bold statement in Rothstein’s oeuvre, a series that defies easy categorization and continually asks the viewer to reconsider the potential and purpose of photography in the modern art world.
In summary, Rothstein’s “Oblique Strategies” is a compelling fusion of concept and medium, a series that encapsulates the artist’s relentless pursuit of pushing the photographic medium beyond its conventional boundaries. It’s a vivid reminder of the transformative power of art and its ability to continually reshape our understanding of the world around us.