PHOTOGRAPHS
Burns, Michael John
U.S. (1942 - )
Windust, Washington
1983
Gelatin silver print
7 7/8 x 9 3/4 in. (20 x 24.8 cm) image size;10 7/8 x 13 15/16 in. (27.6 x 35.4 cm) sheet size
Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection
FA 2001.53

Burns traveled the American West during the early 1980s taking photographs of architectural structures found in desolate settings. Windust is an isolated area along the Snake River in southeastern Washington below the Ice Harbor Lock and Dams that form Lake Sacajawea. The artist described the overall project as a meditation on man’s place in nature. The neglected, often abandoned, structures in these stark environments evoke, in the artist’s words, “a serene melancholy of place, the passage of time, and the fragile tenure of the works of man.” -- Label copy for 150 Works of Art, October 1, 2005 to February 26, 2006.