Bruce Myren

Selections from The Fortieth Parallel: Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado

March 4 - May 5, 2011

My work investigates issues of place and space via the exploration and employment of various locative systems. I am most interested in how macro systems relate to micro experiences of land and landscape. I often use or create rules to govern the location or approach in order to make a series of photographs. This method stems from my interest in maps and mapping, historical photographic surveys, and conceptually-based art practices. It is through these influences that I started to see and make pictures: by measuring, coordinating, and locating myself within the world.

“The Fortieth Parallel” is a panoramic examination of precise yet arbitrary places found along this important parallel of latitude across the American landscape. Since 1998, I have been photographing the 40th degree of latitude across the United States at every whole of degree of longitude using GPS. At each confluence, there is approximately a 20 square-foot area in which I can compose a view. This important baseline was used in surveying state boundaries and creating townships and homesteads, and was a key marker in particular for the settlement the West. I am interested in the relationship between the 19th century’s understanding and construction of landscape, location, and place and our 21st conceptions. There are 50 confluences on land, with 2 at landfall on each coast. To date, I have been to 22 of the 52 sites; in the spring 2011, I plan on visiting 6 more.

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Bruce Myren is an artist and photographer based in Cambridge, MA. He holds a BFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and earned his MFA in studio art from the University of Connecticut, Storrs in 2009. Shown nationally, Myren has been included in group exhibitions at the Houston Center of Photography, TX; The Gallery Project, MI; and the William Benton Museum of Art, CT, among others. Venues for his latest solo exhibitions include the Special Collections Gallery of the Jones Library, Amherst, MA; the Danforth Museum of Art, MA; and Gallery Kayafas, MA, where he is represented. The current Northeast Regional Chair of the Society of Photographic Education, Myren has taught at the University of Connecticut, the New England Institute of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design. https://brucemyren.com/home.html