© 2013 Charles Simonds / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
1971
Landscape <-> Body <-> Dwelling
Charles Simonds, American, born 1945
photo by Nathanson
Charles Simonds, American, born 1945
photo by Nathanson

Landscape <-> Body <-> Dwelling, 1971

Gelatin silver print
64.8 x 92.1 cm. (25 1/2 x 36 1/4 in.)
Collection of the artist
In 1970, one year after completing his M.F.A. at Rutgers University, Simonds launched Mythologies, a series of "rituals" in the clay pits of Sayreville. Home to the Sayre and Fisher Brick Company, the Sayreville quarry had gradually been closed, filled, and paved during the 1940s and 1950s. By the time Simonds and his documentarians arrived, the suburbs were encroaching and only one clay pit was active. All that remained of the factory was a chimney and a steam shovel left to rust in the quicksand. Despite all of this–or because of it, perhaps–Simonds saw in Sayreville a "repository for fantasy." This photograph documents a Mythology realized on location in a disused clay pit–a sunken depression Simonds has compared to a cradle. This otherworldly landscape, removed from history and context by Simonds and by the photographer's adroit cropping, provided an apposite setting for the former's rituals, through which he forged a spiritual, emotional, and physical union with the earth.

The Fertility of Desolation