Luminous River: John Pfahl’s Photographs
of the Susquehanna
By Ron Emhke
Over the course of a career spanning more than thirty years, landscape photographer John Pfahl has explored the complex beauty of both natural and manmade subjects, including waterfalls, industrial smokestacks, and the compost pile in his own backyard. In his newest exhibition, which opens January 15 and runs through February at the Nina Freudenheim Gallery (140 North Street, 882-5777), he turns his camera’s gaze to one of the Northeast’s underappreciated bodies of water.
“I became captivated with the Susquehanna years ago while driving from my home in Buffalo to Washington, D.C. The highway follows the river for about fifty miles between Shamokin Dam and Harrisburg—fifty miles of constantly changing river views. Cutting through five mountain ridges, spotted with wooded islands large and small, and featuring wide glassy surfaces interspersed with riffles and rapids, the Susquehanna appeared to be a condensed catalog of classic river landscapes. The light on that first occasion, and on many subsequent visits, was transcendent. The river seemed to soften the air through which it flowed.
“[…] While the Susquehanna was, indeed, occasionally visited and painted by Hudson River School painters, […] the 448-mile-long river and its 240-mile-long West Branch languished largely ignored by the heavy-hitters of nineteenth century landscape painting. So here I come, in the early part of the twenty-first century, with my large view camera and sturdy tripod, to try and rectify the imbalance. […] My greatest inspiration was the Susquehanna itself, which I followed systematically from its origin in Otsego Lake to its mouth in the Chesapeake Bay, enticed, always, by what lay waiting around the next bend.”
—John Pfahl, excerpts from artist’s statement
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of the Susquehanna
By Ron Emhke
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John Pfahl, Morning Light on Railroad Viaduct, Harrisburg, PA.
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“I became captivated with the Susquehanna years ago while driving from my home in Buffalo to Washington, D.C. The highway follows the river for about fifty miles between Shamokin Dam and Harrisburg—fifty miles of constantly changing river views. Cutting through five mountain ridges, spotted with wooded islands large and small, and featuring wide glassy surfaces interspersed with riffles and rapids, the Susquehanna appeared to be a condensed catalog of classic river landscapes. The light on that first occasion, and on many subsequent visits, was transcendent. The river seemed to soften the air through which it flowed.
“[…] While the Susquehanna was, indeed, occasionally visited and painted by Hudson River School painters, […] the 448-mile-long river and its 240-mile-long West Branch languished largely ignored by the heavy-hitters of nineteenth century landscape painting. So here I come, in the early part of the twenty-first century, with my large view camera and sturdy tripod, to try and rectify the imbalance. […] My greatest inspiration was the Susquehanna itself, which I followed systematically from its origin in Otsego Lake to its mouth in the Chesapeake Bay, enticed, always, by what lay waiting around the next bend.”
—John Pfahl, excerpts from artist’s statement
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