Justin Kimball: Elegy

Exhibition Website

Between 2012 and 2016, Justin Kimball (American, b. 1961, RISD BFA 1985, Photography) drove through Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia photographing small towns that have lost the industries that once made them prosperous communities. Some images portray the residents, their pride, and their hope for renewal, while other images capture dilapidated structures and empty streets. Kimball was keenly aware that the street names—such as Coal Street, West Frack Street, Oak Street, and Spruce Street—reflect the upward mobility of past times rather than the reality of today. He used them as picture titles without identifying the towns, suggesting these sites could represent many places within the U.S. and prompting us to reflect upon similar challenges in our own state. For every elegy, there is a living audience thinking about the future as much as the past.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.         

Whether or not you go, the accompanying book, Justin Kimball: Elegy, by photographer Justin Kimball (born 1961), features small towns in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Ohio brought to the brink of obsolescence by the recent financial downturn, capturing their streets, residents and landscapes in photographs both sensitive to their subjects and compositionally striking. 

While imbued with social and political subtext, Kimball’s images--of ramshackle buildings against a landscape, a mother and baby on their front porch, roadside church signs and teenagers playing a game of pickup basketball--carry a broader significance. In his depiction of communities faced by hardship, Kimball examines the persistence of hope and the concept of what it means to be human in our modern world. His photographs document a growing--yet often overlooked--portion of the American landscape, providing an impressive portrait of the present day.

To add this book to your art library, click here: Justin Kimball: Elegy

  • Photography
  • American
  • Contemporary
  • Culture / Lifestyle
  • Justin Kimball

Exhibition Venues & Dates