Preview of Bill Walterman's Fall Exhibit in the main gallery this summer

The Museum of East Texas is delighted to present a preview of Bill Walterman's fall exhibit, "From the Air: A Different Perspective of East Texas" in our main gallery this summer. Visitors will enjoy viewing four paired images: one a traditional drone photograph and the other taken straight down from the drone, creating an "Almost Abstract" experience of the earth. We are eager for the entire show to begin in October in the Discoveroom and know our visitors will be ready for more after this taste of eight preview photographs in our gallery. Special thanks to Bill for his assistance with curating and installing this show for us!

Artist Statement:

From the Air

A Different Perspective of East Texas

Some years back I came across Andrew Moore’s book “Dirt Meridian.”   Up until then I was only familiar with aerial photography shot from tens of thousands of feet in the air where the earth was represented by amorphous blobs of color.  Interesting, but not my cup of tea.  Moore, on the other hand, photographed the Great Plains from a light plane at much lower one thousand feet or so and I was fascinated by the perspective and detail that the much lower altitude gave the landscape.  I thought about the idea of low altitude aerial perspective for years, but an airplane was out of the question.  Then drones became available, I decided to try one and now I have a camera with wings. I’ve since been exploring East Texas with the drone, focusing on small towns and landscapes, and found the viewpoint, perspective and detail rendered from the altitude of 100 to 200 feet to be of my liking. 

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There are four pairs of photographs presented here.  Each pair includes a cityscape of East Texas from the air and what I call an almost abstract image looking at that cityscape from directly above.  What is an almost abstract?  Some years ago, while working on this project, I was photographing Navasota, Texas.  I just happened to point the drone’s lens straight down at the intersection of La Salle Street and Main Street (Hwy 105) and was amazed at the geometry, pattern and graphics of what I saw.  What was still recognizable as traffic signals, lane markers, directional arrows and vehicles became, from the vantage point of 100 feet, almost abstract.  And that’s what I’ve come to call these photogrpahs - Almost Abstract.  Just enough to allow the viewer to recognize the reality of what’s seen but with enough perspective that calls a different type of image to mind.  My friend and fellow photographer, Terri Golas, has defined this concept as:

“…the love of abstraction is less about escaping reality and more about transforming and reinterpreting it.  You’re not seeking to leave the world behind but rather to reframe it and blur the lines between the tangible and imagination. … It’s about finding beauty in ambiguity and seeing beyond the obvious… where the abstraction is in the seeing.”

And “seeing between the tangible and imagination” is what the Almost Abstract photographs are about. 

These four pairs are a from a larger exhibit: “From the Air” to come in the Fall.  

I hope you will enjoy.

bill walterman