In the summer of 1973, John Schott drove Route 66 from the Midwest to California and back, sleeping in his pick-up truck and photographing with an 8 x 10 inch Deardorf view camera. Among his subjects were the motels situated along this expanse of highway.
Route 66 Motels will present a key set of vintage prints that formed Schott’s series of topographic views of these small motels that punctuate this highway landscape, both in daylight and under the glow of artificial illumination. In this collection of vernacular forms, Schott describes a particular architectural structure, within a specific era, while subtly reminding his viewers that the road and its adjacent dwellings are part of what defines the landscape.
John Schott studied photography at the University of Michigan with Phil Davis and pursued graduate studies in the History of Art. During this period he photographed with and befriended then-emerging photographers Nicholas Nixon and Lynne Cohen.
In 1975 he received an Individual Artist’s Fellowship in Photography from the National Endowment for the Arts. That same year he was included in William Jenkins’ seminal exhibition at the George Eastman House, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape. In 2009 a reexamination of this exhibition organized Britt Salvesen toured to numerous museum venues including: the Center for Creative Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jeu de Paume, Paris and Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, Bilbao.
In 2003 he was executive producer of the 3-part national PBS special, American Photography: A Century of Images. Since 1979 he has been a Professor at Carleton College in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies.
His photographs are held within numerous public collections including: The George Eastman Museum, University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Fogg Art Museum.
John Schott
Route 66 Motels
January 7 – February 10, 2017
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037
United States
www.josephbellows.com
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
© John Schott, Untitled, from Route 66 Motels, 1973
