(Editor's Note: “Flyover country” refers to the large expanse of land that nonstop flights pass over when traveling between the major urban areas along the East and West coasts, such as flights between New York and Los Angeles. The term is often used derisively to suggest that the interior region of the United States, including Northcental Pennsylvania, is a cultural and political wasteland that is best to fly over and avoid.)
I spent the first half of my life in large metro areas, such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit. After working in advertising for several years, I decided to make a mid-career switch into academic teaching and research. I moved to Northcentral Pennsylvania to join the business faculty at Bucknell University, and then transferred to Lycoming College a few years later. I loved my jobs, but outside of work, I had a hard time acclimating to the slower and more natural pace of life in our rural locale. I missed the constant stimulation and endless amusements that big cities offer, and I found living in flyover country to be rather boring in comparison.
Eventually, I blew the dust off my camera, which I had barely used in years, and I started photographing subjects in my immediate vicinity. By doing so, I started seeing things that had been invisible or irrelevant to me in the past. Backyard birds. Bubbling creeks. Blossoming wildflowers. Bent spoon garden art. Barnyard Billy goats. Back-alley barbershops. And those are just the ones that begin with the letter “b”!
These things might seem trivial to big city sophisticates, but they add meaning and joy to everyday life in our neck of the woods, and they strengthen our shared sense of community and place. In the process of photographing these objects, I felt a deepening connection to the people, places, and natural amenities that make our region special.
As a student at Princeton University, I studied fine art photography with Emmet Gowin, a renowned artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Emmet believed that a photograph can be created to tell a story, to evoke an emotional response, or to give form to a creative vision. A photograph can be a work of art. I was inspired by Emmet’s vision and hoped to follow in his footsteps, but after graduating from college, I had to put my photography on the back burner in order to earn a living and raise a family.
Now that I’m taking photographs again, I still aspire to creating images that have artistic merit, but I want them to be pictures that local residents can enjoy and relate to. Photographs that might help to remind us that Northcentral Pennsylvania is more than just a stretch of flyover country between New York and Los Angeles.
A note about photographic prints
Today, many photographers are uninvolved in the process of creating physical prints from their digital images. I take the opposite approach and print all my photographs with my own in-house equipment. I produce them one at a time and frequently make small adjustments along the way, so that no two prints are exactly alike. This is a practice that traditional printmakers and lithographers used for centuries, regarding each print as a unique work of art rather than as a copy, reproduction, or part of a run of identical impressions.
Arthur Sterngold
[email protected]
570.220.0204 (talk or text)
I spent the first half of my life in large metro areas, such as New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and Detroit. After working in advertising for several years, I decided to make a mid-career switch into academic teaching and research. I moved to Northcentral Pennsylvania to join the business faculty at Bucknell University, and then transferred to Lycoming College a few years later. I loved my jobs, but outside of work, I had a hard time acclimating to the slower and more natural pace of life in our rural locale. I missed the constant stimulation and endless amusements that big cities offer, and I found living in flyover country to be rather boring in comparison.
Eventually, I blew the dust off my camera, which I had barely used in years, and I started photographing subjects in my immediate vicinity. By doing so, I started seeing things that had been invisible or irrelevant to me in the past. Backyard birds. Bubbling creeks. Blossoming wildflowers. Bent spoon garden art. Barnyard Billy goats. Back-alley barbershops. And those are just the ones that begin with the letter “b”!
These things might seem trivial to big city sophisticates, but they add meaning and joy to everyday life in our neck of the woods, and they strengthen our shared sense of community and place. In the process of photographing these objects, I felt a deepening connection to the people, places, and natural amenities that make our region special.
As a student at Princeton University, I studied fine art photography with Emmet Gowin, a renowned artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide. Emmet believed that a photograph can be created to tell a story, to evoke an emotional response, or to give form to a creative vision. A photograph can be a work of art. I was inspired by Emmet’s vision and hoped to follow in his footsteps, but after graduating from college, I had to put my photography on the back burner in order to earn a living and raise a family.
Now that I’m taking photographs again, I still aspire to creating images that have artistic merit, but I want them to be pictures that local residents can enjoy and relate to. Photographs that might help to remind us that Northcentral Pennsylvania is more than just a stretch of flyover country between New York and Los Angeles.
A note about photographic prints
Today, many photographers are uninvolved in the process of creating physical prints from their digital images. I take the opposite approach and print all my photographs with my own in-house equipment. I produce them one at a time and frequently make small adjustments along the way, so that no two prints are exactly alike. This is a practice that traditional printmakers and lithographers used for centuries, regarding each print as a unique work of art rather than as a copy, reproduction, or part of a run of identical impressions.
Arthur Sterngold
[email protected]
570.220.0204 (talk or text)
[NOTE: Photographs of Kathy Sterngold's pottery and ceramic art are temporarily being hosted on this website until she is able to reclaim her domain name. Click here to see her pages.]