Awards

• Winner of Colorado Book Award (Pictorial) 2014

Overview

The transient nature of our place in the world has long been an abiding artistic concern of Andrew Beckham. Whether he stands firmly on the ground or star-gazes into the heavens, Beckham, through the frame of his camera, tries to answer questions that have accompanied human life over the millennia: How do we know where and when we fit in the scheme of Life? How do we find a meaningful place for ourselves within Nature? Is one place more or less important than another for contemplating the eternal questions of Who am I? and What am I doing here? In constructing visual poems that include single images as well as visual montages of sequenced photographs, Beckham tries to reconcile these questions by focusing on the synchronicity between the mundane and the infinite. By presenting these images as a new kind of visual storytelling, Beckham juxtaposes the varying scales of photographic inquiry, from the private spaces near our homes to the expanding and unknowable universe. Firmament is a meditation on place unlike any other. In Portfolio I, Beckham discovers a unique stretch of land, one square-mile in Bear Creek Canyon near his home, where a curious sense of visual order is achieved amongst the chaos of impenetrable bramble and thick woods. For the artist, this is ground incarnate. In Portfolio II, Beckham explores a landscape so wide and vast that space can hardly be contained within the frame of his camera. Here, in the 20,000 square miles known as the Sand Hills, Beckham discovers a place where land and sky meet and often merge within a virtual sea of rolling prairie grassland. In Portfolio III, Beckham turns to the incalculable distance between the heavens and Earth, between grounded experience and infinite space. Here, Beckham's artistry is revealed in a visual assemblage of his own photographic work merged with the cosmologies of centuries-old star charts. In viewing Andrew Beckham's work, we see depth and beauty, serenity and enlightenment, and we gain a certain reassurance that there is something greater than ourselves when we contemplate the universe with a sense of reverence and even awe. We also come to realize that we have a sacred duty to understand and respect our individual place within the world, so that we may take better care of that which we have come to know, no matter how small or large the scale.

Full Product Details

9781938086151

Table of Contents

Reviews

Andrew Beckham considers himself a visual poet, and I would have to agree with that conclusion. His new book, Firmament, released by George F. Thompson Publishing, includes photographs and essays by the photographer, with a forward by Blake Milteer, Museum Director and Chief Curator of the Taylor Art Museum/Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. His beautifully executed black and white photographs are an expression of his concerns as an artist and human being, and are about trying to make sense of our place in the universe.

Andrew Beckham continues a vital reconnaissance, searching for places where the truth seems secure and, like life itself, is resonant with an inexplicable poignancy. He also confronts a kind of paradoxical truth: that great beauty can dwell in the darkness and in the apparent chaos of emerging forms. Recalling the words of Robert Adams, in the redemptive nature of light, Beckham finds grace and the rekindling of an affection for living.

Author Information

Andrew Beckham is a photographer from Denver and Chairman of the Visual Arts Department at St. Mary's Academy in nearby Englewood. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Denver Art Museum, MacArthur Foundation, Museum of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University, Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others, and his artist's books are in the special collections of the University of Denver's Penrose Library and the University of Colorado's Norlin Library. A Fulbright Fellow in Photography, Beckham has also been an invited artist-in-residence at the Anderson Ranch Art Center, Center for the Study of Place, and Rocky Mountain National Park. His first book, The Lost Christmas Gift, was published to widespread critical acclaim by Princeton Architectural Press in 2012. BLAKE L. MILTEER is Museum Director and Curator of American Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, where he oversees the museum's American art collection. He has curated numberous exhibitions, including, in 2012, a major installation of the work of James Turrell.

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