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Chuck Koosmann is a life long Midwesterner and currently lives in Afton,
Minnesota. He was trained as an architect and practiced for over thirty years.
His photography has been influenced by that experience, as well as by his
extensive travels. These travels, from the familiar sights of Europe and Asia
to remote locations in Mongolia, Patagonia and the Pacific, have provided the
subject matter for much of his work. His images reveal the form and pattern
that lies within nature and the built environment. Taken in available light,
these images portray their subjects with a delicate yet realistic sensitivity.
The results are images of simple beauty and enduring complexity.
Koosmann is currently working on a series of black and white images of
places in China's Yangtze River Valley prior to the flooding of the Three
Gorges Dam. Many of these places now lie underwater. He is also working
on a color series that explores the interrelationship of water, vapor and sky.
A year before a portion of the Yangtze River was to be flooded by the
construction of the Three Gorges Dam Chuck Koosmann traveled down the
river to record an environment that would soon disappear. The Three Gorges
Dam, while providing much needed power and flood control to a vast area of
China , will eventually inundate over 1,000 square kilometers of up stream
land. This inundation will bring the destruction of 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,351
villages, 657 factories; the loss of 74,100 acres of cultivated land, critical
habitat areas and unexcavated historic sites; and, perhaps most tragically,
the dislocation of over 1.3 million people. “Three Gorges: A Year before the
Dam” will be exhibited at The Exposure Gallery of Photography in New
Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A from September 19 through October 13, 2007.
Minnesota. He was trained as an architect and practiced for over thirty years.
His photography has been influenced by that experience, as well as by his
extensive travels. These travels, from the familiar sights of Europe and Asia
to remote locations in Mongolia, Patagonia and the Pacific, have provided the
subject matter for much of his work. His images reveal the form and pattern
that lies within nature and the built environment. Taken in available light,
these images portray their subjects with a delicate yet realistic sensitivity.
The results are images of simple beauty and enduring complexity.
Koosmann is currently working on a series of black and white images of
places in China's Yangtze River Valley prior to the flooding of the Three
Gorges Dam. Many of these places now lie underwater. He is also working
on a color series that explores the interrelationship of water, vapor and sky.
A year before a portion of the Yangtze River was to be flooded by the
construction of the Three Gorges Dam Chuck Koosmann traveled down the
river to record an environment that would soon disappear. The Three Gorges
Dam, while providing much needed power and flood control to a vast area of
China , will eventually inundate over 1,000 square kilometers of up stream
land. This inundation will bring the destruction of 13 cities, 140 towns, 1,351
villages, 657 factories; the loss of 74,100 acres of cultivated land, critical
habitat areas and unexcavated historic sites; and, perhaps most tragically,
the dislocation of over 1.3 million people. “Three Gorges: A Year before the
Dam” will be exhibited at The Exposure Gallery of Photography in New
Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A from September 19 through October 13, 2007.
