John Griebsch

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Badlands--near Wall, SD, 2012	Bridges, 2012	Dawn's Early Light -- Harrietstown, NY, 2012
Red Spain with Tree Shadows	Sandbar, Waves, and Seagulls- off the coast of Martha's Vineyard, 2012	Snowmobile Tracks No. 3, Sodus Bay, NY
Stream, Bog and Forest--Dead Creek near Conifer, NY, 2012	Textural Orchard No. 2	Winter Orchard and Sunlit Forest, Sodus, NY
Winter Orchard II, Wayne County, NY	Sonoma Valley Quilt - Sonoma Valley, California	Spain, Gray and Green Patchwork
Figuartive Field near Gratz, PA	Wheatfield and Tractor No.039	Autumn Trees, NY No.113
Five Green Ponds, Batavia, New York	Golf Course, Lock Berlin, NY No.106	Hudson River and Tappan Zee Bridge No.209
James River, Virginia	James River, Virginia No.77	Lake Ice Patterns, Lake Ontario No.125
Soft Hills and Road, Montana No.22	Winter Maze, Huddle NY No.174	Chevron Fields 6, near Selinsgrove, PA No.043, 2005
Quarry, Red Tail - Near Kankakee, Illinois No.68, 2005	Curved Break Wall - Lake Michigan, Chicago No.94, 2005	Fields and Pickups - near Carnesville, Georgia
Figurative Agriculture - near Stampede Pass, Washington	Hudson River Marsh and Boat (No.084), 2005	Ice Drift - Lake Ontario near Putneyville, NY No.136, 2005
Mower Mania - near Star Prairie, Wisconsin	Plowed Fields - near Hannibal, Missouri	Plowed Fields, Power Lines and Waterway (No.014), 2005
Poplar Corner - near Sodus, New York	Tidal Dunes -Gulfport, Mississippi

Artist Statement

My aerial photographs present a sense of selective design applied to an extremely small and specific area of the vast landscape over which I fly.  I find the need to make geographical sense of the earth, as well as the need to make visual sense of a photograph. 

I work with ambiguity of scale, the graphic quality of nature and with the hand of man upon the landscape. My images have an abstract and often painterly quality.  They are at once factual and interpretive.

 Familiar landscapes take on a fresh context when airborne. The images require the confluence of several factors. There is the subject – a minuscule segment of the landscape that has captured my interest due to its sense of pattern, order or disarray. There is the essential contribution of light. There is the position and altitude of the airplane, and there is a need to capture the stillness and composition of the moment while moving over the subject at more than seventy miles per hour. 

My earliest aerial photographs were of ice and farmland, made close to home. The scope of the work opened up on solo flights across the continent in my vintage 1952 Cessna 170B.  Those flights are made to find images of landscapes on a grander scale as well as unfamiliar opportunities to find images that take in a small detail. 

In my most recent work I’ve discovered what might be regarded as historical or documentary themes – some of the images of factories and quarries present relics of the country’s industrial past, while my newer images of the landscape and agriculture denote changes in the scale of farming and open space.

My images are typically presented as framed 30” x40” or larger prints. The existing body of work, titled Aerias is comprised of more than two hundred images.  Collections of my images have been placed in corporate and business settings and in private collections.

I started photographing when I was twelve years old.  My father taught me to fly when I was fourteen years old.  Before taking off on my first solo flight, he admonished me not to go out of sight of the airport.  I was soon out of his view and yet from where I was, the airport was always in sight.  Such are the perceptions of a photographer who is airborne.  

Artist Bio

Griebsch’s images of American and European aerial landscapes depict the pattern, color and design of natural and manmade landforms. Most of the American aerials have been made from John’s vintage 1952 Cessna 170B aircraft.