George Olson, Signs of the Times
Presented by Photography At Oregon

October 1st through October 24, 2021
Artist Talk on Zoom Sunday October 10 at 1:00pm
Artist Talk at 1:00pm on October 10th

Dot Dotson’s Gallery
1668 Willamette Street
Eugene, Oregon
541-485-1771
12:00 to 5:00 pm Monday through Thursday
http://dotdotsons.com/
Open to the public, masks required

When I was a kid in Topeka, I remember that my dad had a drawer in his desk filled with maps. I would pick one out, spread it on the floor, find the little towns with funny names and dream of going there…. [Doing so by] car, far from the runways and freeways, there is the rolling-past-yesterday romance of the old routes; the rambling rivulets that flow between East and West; the ribbons that wrap an ever-diminishing rural American into a gift from the past.

Rather than creating images, I find them. The reality is someone else’s; the humor is mine. I might enhance that humor through juxtaposition. Sometimes a “grab shot” is the only way to get the picture. But then that’s just what you might glimpse from your car window as you’re riding.

This is my way of avoiding the straight and narrow of the four-lane bureaucratic beltway. It makes me wonder whatever happened to touring: “Waaall sonny, d’ya want the shortest way or d’ya wanna take the scenic route?
I always take that scenic route.

These photographs are for anyone who has ever taken a ride in a car.

— George Olson

George Olson’s work is known for its wit and moving detail. On the Board of Directors of Northwest Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon, he is former director of photography of Sunset and has photographed for National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian, and the New York Times. He was a picture editor for the San Francisco Examiner and books in the Day in the Life series. He was Director of Photography of Baseball in America and edited Planet Vegas. He is on the faculty of the Missouri University Photo Workshop. He served on the faculty of the Book Passage Travel Photography workshop and has taught photography workshops through Fotovision. He participated in Photography at the Summit workshops in Jackson Hole and Colorado Springs. He taught photojournalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Olson served as judge for Pictures of the Year; Best of Photojournalism; College Photographer of the Year; Women’s Conference on Photojournalism; and the Western Magazine Publishers Maggie Awards.