#2007-17: October 5, 2007 "Retail Landscape" Exhibition at the Erpf Gallery The Catskill Center Erpf Gallery presents "Retail Landscape", an exhibition of photographs by Drew Harty. The opening reception is Saturday, October 13 from 5-7pm at the Erpf Gallery, Route 28 in Arkville. Drew Harty is a photographer who lives in Treadwell. He will be showing more than twenty black and white photographs. He has been working for more than 25 years photographing the natural landscape as a free-lance photographer for history and natural history museums as well as a cameraman for network documentaries. This exhibit looks at one of the most visible aspects of suburban sprawl -retail landscapes. The rapid construction of strip centers, shopping malls and big-box retail stores has transformed the American landscape. You have very likely seen the changes in a town or city near you. From the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, he drove Interstate 81 from New York to North Carolina twice yearly for a photography job. By the end of that period the variety in local restaurants and hotels had vanished, and in their place crowed at the edge of towns were the same franchised chain hotels and restaurants all along Interstate 81. Everywhere was becoming familiar and uncomfortably the same. Brand identity was replacing community identity and creating, what the author James Kunstler calls, "a geography of nowhere." The retail landscape is a hodgepodge of undistinguished buildings, roadways, access routes, automobiles, signage, lamp poles and perfunctory landscaping. Every detail of its design, the authors of Suburban Nation state, is dictated by technical manuals that are "organized, written, and enforced in the name of a single objective: making cars happy." Creating human-scale environments that foster social interaction and build communities are not the goals. "Whether America grows into a placeless collection of subdivisions, strip centers, and office parks, or real towns with real neighborhoods," the authors of Suburban Nation suggest, "will depend on whether its citizens understand the difference between those two alternatives." In total, more than 20 pieces of art will be on exhibit at the Erpf Gallery through December 31st. The public is invited free of charge. The gallery is open Monday - Friday, 9-5, and Saturdays from 12-4.