Frank Gohlke

Frank Gohlke was born in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1942, and grew up there. He received his B.A. from the University of Texas in 1964 and his M.A. in English literature from Yale University in 1966. He came to national prominence in 1975 when his Midwestern photographs were selected for the influential George Eastman House exhibition New Topographics: Images of a Man-Altered Landscape. Gohlke received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography that same year and a second Guggenheim in 1984. He also has received numerous other fellowships and commissions over his career, including requests to contribute to the Seagram Corporation’s renowned “Court House” project (1976–77) and the Amon Carter Museum’s “Contemporary Texas” project (1984). More recent commissions include projects for Cleveland’s Gund Foundation (1997), and for Queens College in New York (2003–2004). He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, and teaches photography at the University of Arizona.

Gohlke has had numerous exhibitions across the United States and Europe, and his work is in the collections of major museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Amon Carter Museum. His books include Landscapes from the Middle of the World (Friends of Photography, 1988); Measure of Emptiness (Johns Hopkins, 1992); The Sudbury River (Decordova Museum, 1993); Mt. St. Helens (Museum of Modern Art, 2005); and Accommodating Nature (Amon Carter Museum, 2008).