Mark Citret’s new book Parallel Landscapes is a collection of 47 beautiful photographs of the landscape of his dreams: a massive construction site in southwest San Francisco.
The images chosen for the book were distilled from more than 100 photographs taken between 1990 and 1993, a project that Mark says constitutes the finest body of work he’s produced in five decades as a photographer. During this time, Mark chronicled the metamorphosis of the construction site, from the excavation to the foundation, walls and columns, enclosed rooms, and finally to a series of cavernous chambers.
Every photograph in Parallel Landscapes was made with a 4×5 view camera using Kodak T-Max 100 film developed Agfa Rodinal and printed by hand in a traditional darkroom.
The book, funded by a Kickstarter campaign, was designed by Gudrun Thielemann of AlvarHus Media in Sweden and was printed at Longo Spa AG in Bolzano, Italy, known as one of the best printing houses in the world for fine art black and white photography books.
“It has been a great pleasure for me to strive for this book to become a real precious object. A construction site as we know from our experience is muddy, dirty, wet, dark, unpleasant. Seen through Mark’s eyes, this unappealing place becomes a scene where you may want to meet your lover. A plastic sheet, transformed into a lovely piece of lingerie, concrete walls with rebar steel where you see the moon rising. Those sensual, romantic, teasing photographs just deserved to be bound in a pure, elegant design, with materials that in look and feel represent Mark’s graceful, substantial body of work.” — Gudrun Thielemann
After the lecture, the book will be available for purchase and Mark will be on hand to sign copies.
“As a platinum printer, it takes a lot for me to be seduced by a print … and not only was I drawn in by the beauty and craft of Citret’s prints, but I was so impressed that I bought one. An image of a perfect conical mountain rising above a flat sea with a shadow devouring the peak. Sublime.” — Platinum printer Ann Jastrab, in a review of Parallel Landscapes for All-About-Photo.com.
See behind-the-scenes photos and videos from the production and printing of Parallel Landscapes on the AlvarHus Media Facebook page.
Author bio: Mark Citret was born in 1949 in Buffalo, NY, and grew up in San Francisco. He has been photographing seriously since 1968 and received both his BA and MA in Art from San Francisco State University. From 1970–1973, Mark assisted Ansel Adams at his acclaimed Yosemite Workshops, working with Adams in the darkroom as well as in the field.
Mark’s work spans a variety of locales and subjects, from farming in the Catskill Mountains to a survey of architecture in the national parks, to the ever-changing play of ocean and sky from the cliff behind his Bay Area home.
He has taught at the UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz Extension programs, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Ansel Adams Gallery, and Santa Fe Workshops. His work hangs in prestigious public and private collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, Bank of America, Pacific Bell, and Hewlett-Packard. Parallel Landscapes is his third book of photography.
