Information about The Flower Cottages project for the art sites
Press resources for “The Flower Cottages” a fine art photographers in-depth look at the iconic row of historic little summer rental cottages on the beaches of Cape Cod.
About the project
On Cape Cod’s outermost region, what is basically an ancient sand bar, lays the iconic “Days Cottages”, 22 identical weekly summer rental cottages built-in the 1930s. Each cottage is named after a flower.
Fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding captured them in the documentary in an homage to the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher
More information:
ARTIST BOOK
This is the one of a kind artist book created by Caffrey Fielding (RISD class of 2021) using images from the Flower Cottages series of photographs by Edward Fielding.
How to purchase prints and the book from the project
A small POD art book of the project is available from Amazon for $4.95 and provides a low rez catalog of the prints. https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Cottages-Cape-Cods-Identical/dp/1987754301
High quality prints are available from this portfolio – https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/collections/the+flower+cottages+of+cape+cod
Press Release for The Flower Cottages Project
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Edward M. Fielding’s New Series of Fine Art Photographs Deals With Cape Cod Summer Memories
Provincetown, MA – April 11, 2018/ – Award winning fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding has released a new series of photographs of the iconic “Flower Cottages” which line the beach on Route 6A just outside of Provincetown. The iconic Day’s Cottages of North Truro have hosted weekly summer rental vacationers since the 1930s and the row of small cottage, nearly lined up along the roadway and shore have inspired generations of artists. Twenty-two identical cottages receive a documentary portrait in Fielding’s series in which the viewer is invited to examine for differences.
Edward M. Fielding’s “The Flower Cottages of Cape Cod” series are available as individual prints. A small artbook that harkens back to Ed Ruscha’s 1960s small books “23 Gas Stations” and “Various Small Fires and Milk”.
The individual cottage portraits were influenced by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher and the New Topographics or human-alter landscape movements. The Flower Cottages are also known as Day’s Cottages which were offered as weekly rentals for 87 years until recently they were converted into condos but protected by local regulations to remain summer cottages. Prints of the Flower Cottages series can be purchase at: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/collections/the+flower+cottages+of+cape+cod
Edward M. Fielding lives in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire on the banks of Anderson Pond in Grantham and photographs in his studio, the New England region and beyond. His work is shown in galleries and appears on book covers around the world. http://www.edwardfielding.com
The Flower Cottages series of fine art photographs of iconic Cape Cod landmark of twenty two identical summer rental cottages is now available for purchase as prints. Contact the artist to arrange a showing of this work.
About Fine Art Photographer Edward M. Fielding:
Edward M. Fielding works from his Dogford Studios in Grantham, New Hampshire on Anderson Pond. His artwork can be found in private collections around the world as well as in national and international magazines and book covers. Fielding also teaches at the AVA Gallery in Lebanon, NH. www.edwardfielding.com. He also can be reached at edward_fielding@dogfordstudios.com
Contact Information:
Email Address: edward_fielding@dogfordstudios.com
Website: edwardfielding.com
Blog: dogfordstudios.com
Prints: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com
More info on the series: https://spark.adobe.com/page/lIR8sJU47ehy3/
A catalog of the individual cottage portraits can be orderd on Amazon for $4.95 at: e https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Cottages-Cape-Cods-Identical/dp/1987754301
ISBN-10: 1987754301
Interview with Edward Fielding about “The Flower Cottages”
Fine art photographer Edward M. Fielding (edwardfielding.com) sits down to discuss his latest photography project, “The Flower Cottages”.
What is your background with photography?
I first fell in love with photography at summer camp in the sixth grade. We were given 35mm SLR cameras, loaded our own film canisters and developed black and white negatives on picnic tables. I was hooked by the magic of photography. Later I had my own darkroom I’d set up in a bathroom or closet.
In college I’d often try to avoid working on a paper by spending time flipping through the extensive photography monograph section at the Boston University library. From Adams to Weegee, I started at one end of the row and worked my way through all the books.
My first ever online purchase was an old Graflex Crown Graphic 4×5 press camera. I bought a wooden tripod and a Polaroid back to shoot Type 55 film which gave you both a positive proof and a negative which could be used in an enlarger.
But life got busy with career and family. I dabbled along the way with photography but it wasn’t until digital cameras became more mainstream that I had the time to seriously get back into it, as well as having online income sources like stock photography and print on demand sites like Fine Art America which could help support for my passion.
Tell Us About Your Latest Project, “The Flower Cottages”.
“The Flower Cottages” is really a homage to “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” which was an exhibition from the 1970s that shook up the photography world. Rather than presenting landscape as uninhabited beauty or some kind of pristine untouched environment, like you’d see with the work of say Edward Weston or Ansel Adams, new landscape photographers like Robert Adams focused on showing the encroachment of humans on the landscape. For example, Robert Adams would show a beautiful mountain valley but it would include a seemingly endless housing development of nearly identical homes.
The show itself and the photographers were no doubt inspired by the earlier work of Edward Ruscha, especially the numerous artist books (26 Gasoline Stations (1962), Various Small Fires (1964), 34 Parking Lots (1967), etc.) that he self-published in the 1960s. Of course the influences probably go back even further to Walker Evans’ work which often showed the mark of humans on the landscape.
I’ve been inspired by these photographers and others working in this vein such as Mark Klett, whose work focuses on explorations of man’s interaction with the American landscape, and more recently, on issues of photography in time, including rephotography which is photographing places that were photographed year ago to highlight changes to the environment.
Another influence was from a German photography team who were included in the original “New Topographics” show. Bernd and Hilla Becher created an amazing series of straight forward, documentary style, large format photographs of industrial sites such as blast furnaces and water towers which were then presented next to each other, inviting the viewers to see the sameness as well as the individuality of these normally overlooked industrial structures. They found a quiet beauty in structures most would consider ugly blights on the landscape.
I had all of these influences running around in my head when I was researching Cape Cod for an upcoming trip. When I came across Days’ Cottages, a row of 22 identical 1930s summer rental cottages on a spit of beach between North Truro and Provincetown, I knew I had a new project. Each cottage has a flower name like Poppy or Daisy, so they are nicknamed “The Flower Cottages.”
I immediately saw the themes of man’s folly of building on shifting sands, a bit of pop art era commentary on mass production and the idea of identity as well as a dose of nostalgia. The cottages could stand for people in a over-crowded world and the desire to stand out from the crowd. Here the cottages strive for conformity but when observed closely, subtle differences and perhaps individual personalities start to emerge.
Certainly the vacationers, who came back year after year to the same cottage, found something about “their” cottage’s personality that made it desirable over the others. The cottages might look the same on the outside but each contains a separate history of memories made on those summer vacations. Identical twins might look alike but their journeys through life are full of individual experiences.
So before even traveling to Cape Cod I had the final presentation planned out in my mind. I’d photograph the row using a long lens to compress the view and then take individual portraits of each “identical” cottage and present them next to each other so small differences could be noted.
It is interesting that the day I went to photograph the cottages in the offseason, the cottages were undergoing a bit of transformation. The cottages have recently gone condo — after 87 years of being a family-run business, they now will all have individual owners. The cottage outsides will stay the same (as determined by town zoning laws), but the insides will start being renovated to the individual owner’s tastes. When I visited the cottages for the photo shoot the water line was being changed from one main water feed to twenty-two individual feeds, conjoined twins being separated perhaps.
So the result of my project is a few overall shots of the iconic row of summer cottages as well as 23 individual portraits of each cottage including the 22 along the beach and the 23rd cottage which was actually a converted gas station of the same dimensions located across the street from the beach.
I present the work as a gallery show similar to the Becher’s with the cottages lined up on the wall just like they are lined up on the beach, well as an accompanying book or catalog of the portraits in vein of Edward Ruscha’s small art books. Both the book and prints invite the viewer to examine the seemingly identical cottages for subtle differences and perhaps reflect on man’s brief time on the planet and the concept of ownership vs the eons of time that nature lays claim to shifting landscapes such as the beaches of Cape Cod.
Link to the photographs: https://edward-fielding.pixels.com/collections/the+flower+cottages+of+cape+cod
Link to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Flower-Cottages-Cape-Cods-Identical/dp/1987754301