Sunday Post 11-09-08

Michael Eastman

Michael Eastman, born in 1947 in St. Louis, studied business with the intent to take over his father's business. He started taking pictures when he got out of college in the midst of the Vietnam war and all the mayhem that it was causing within our country. After that he was working for a record company when they were looking for someone to shoot a jazz band. The shoot went successfully so he began to print up business cards and took off from there. In the past thirty years he's done fine-art photography on subjects such as European architecture and Midwestern storefronts. His work is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as others. He has received the National Endowment for the Arts grant and been published in Time, The New York Times, Life, American Photographer, and Communication Arts. He still lives in St. Louis. His photographs are mainly architectural, usually lacking in people. When there is a person or people present, they act as small details in the photograph, often dwarfed and enveloped by the spaces they occupy. The spaces Eastman shoots have a sense of being very open, never claustrophobic or cramped. His lighting is highly atmospheric, with a specific color palette tailored to the emotion of the piece.

Interview:
http://www.art-interview.com/Issue_010/interview_Eastman_Michael.html

Gallery:
http://www.artic.edu/

Website:
http://www.eastmanimages.com/photography/index.php/photos/view/18#Home_1