Subhankar Banerjee Biography

"Am I searching for truth? No, there is no one truth; there are only multiple truths. Perhaps what I am searching for in my work is community, both community of our own species and the communities of other species we share this planet with."
—Subhankar Banerjee, Statement of Plans, 2006

Banerjee’s unmanipulated color photographs of our last wilderness, in all its "purple mountains majesty", immediately refutes the notion that there is no THERE there. Indeed, Banerjee’s pictures show that the refuge is a complex and possibly fragile world full of polar bears, musk oxen, moose herds, and more than 160 species of birds. Banerjee makes the space itself feel majestic, and he finds subtle beauty in the seasons and wildlife with which we share our planet. The sweeping vistas recall the 19th Century paintings of our Frontier Wilderness by Albert Bierstadt and Frederick Church.

While Banerjee said his work is not at all "driven by politics," his photographs of pristine wilderness are part of a debate between environmentalists and the Bush Administration.

In October 2000, Banerjee left his career in the sciences (working at Los Alamos and at Boeing) for his growing passion and devotion to documenting our nation’s last frontier. Meet Subhankar Banerjee at Michael Berger Gallery on December 2 from 4-7 p.m. Free and open to the public.

"Photography has become a full-blown artistic medium in its own right."
—Richard Armstrong, Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, The New York Times (Oct 15, 2006)

Banerjee's unmanipulated photographs "summon a sense of the sublime..."
—Hilarie M. Sheets, ARTNews, March 2005

"Banerjee's large-format color images seem less controversial than stunningly beautiful. Alternating between sweeping vistas and exquisite details, sometimes in the same picture the works show untouched nature in all its diverse grandeur. Pictures shot from an airplane rehabilitate the phrase 'purple mountains' majesty' and reduce migrating caribou to strands of antlike marks on fields of ice. A glass-smooth lake mirrors the surrounding landscape, giving the plant life an air of Magic Realist menace not unlike one of Gregory Crewdson's early photographs. ... Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, presented Mr. Banerjee's images to rebut the pro-drilling argument of Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, who had said that the refuge was 'a flat white nothingness'. These images suggest a vastly different reality."
—Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Art Review, Oct. 13, 2004

"Banerjee's landscapes seem epic, and there is something about them that is haunting. ... His best photographs have an authenticity, a gravitas, and a beauty that more rote imagery is without. ...when you see Banerjee's most memorable pictures, it's not hardship that's evident but beauty. A non-formulaic beauty. ...he shows the beauty of ordinary scenes and of the passing of the seasons. He finds grace in tangled up branches and unruly weeds. ... It is the 'everythingness' that Banerjee's photographs capture that has made them politically explosive. They are relevant to both art and science; in fact, their strength is that the two ways of understanding the world can't be untangled in these pictures. Their ultimate so-called crime was that they did not depict a wasteland."
—Ingrid Sischy, in an extensive profile story, The Smithsonian's Big Chill in Vanity Fair, December 2003

"In the 19th century, painter Albert Bierstadt produced sweeping vistas of the American West, documenting...the frontier's natural paradise and arousing nationwide interest in Manifest Destiny. In the 21st century, photographer Subhankar Banerjee is producing sweeping vistas of the continent's last frontier—the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
—dwell Magazine

"The photographs' long, unbroken horizon lines and the vast spaces they depict certainly testify to the region's fundamental geography. But Banerjee makes the space itself feel majestic, and he finds subtle beauty in the seasons and wildlife."
—John Zeaman, North Jersey Media Group

For more on Subhankar Banerjee, please visit his website http://www.wwbphoto.com or any of the following:

Dancing With the Bears by Lavina Melwani, Little India

Shooting from the Soul: With Humility and Chutzpah, One Man Makes His Mark by Lynda V. Mapes Pacific Northwest, The Seattle Times Magazine

Art and activism meet in photo exhibit by Beth Potier, Harvard News Gazette

Inside the Endangered Arctic Refuge by Peter Matthiessen, The New York Review of Books, October 19, 2006

Lay of the Land: Oil Trumps Art Sierra Magazine, September/October 2003 Issue

Subhankar gave an in-depth 46 minute talk on his work and thoughts for the Google Lecture series on December 12, 2006.