Peter Bacon Hales
Peter B. Hales | |
---|---|
Born | Pasadena, California, U.S.[1] | November 13, 1950
Died | August 26, 2014 near Stone Ridge, New York, U.S. | (aged 63)
Language | English |
Nationality | American |
Period | 1980–2014 |
Notable works | Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839–1915; Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project |
Spouse | Maureen Pskowski |
Peter Bacon Hales (November 13, 1950 – August 26, 2014) was an American historian, photographer, author and musician specializing in American spaces and landscapes, the history of photography and contemporary art.
Biography
Hales graduated from
Hales focus eventually turned from specifically urban America to the broader changes in the nation's physical and cultural geography. His analysis concentrated on the
In 2006, Hales published an extensively revised and enlarged version of his first book, now renamed Silver Cities: Photographing American Urbanization, 1839–1939; the revised version included more sophisticated studies of race, ethnicity and gender, and extended the work well into the 20th century, including studies of the urban photography of the Farm Security Administration.
In the beginning of the 21st century, Hales' attention turned to the virtual world, both as subject and as means of gathering and presenting historical and cultural information. With his UIC colleague Robert Bruegmann, Hales developed a website collecting and organizing visual documentation of the Chicago built environment, the Chicago Architecture Imagebase [1]; in addition, he developed a collaborative public-history project on the postwar American suburb, Levittown, Long Island, [2] In April 2014, Hales' work, Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America From Hiroshima to Now—a continuation of his Silver Cities project—was released. At the time of his death in the late summer of 2014 Hales had been working on projects exploring the cultural and virtual landscapes of America including extended meditations on
Death
In the early evening of August 26, 2014, Hales — who was an avid bicycle enthusiast — was killed in an accident involving a motor vehicle near his post-retirement home in Stone Ridge, New York.[7]
Photography
Hales exhibited widely throughout the United States. His photographs also appeared in his own books and in those of other cultural historians.[8]
Selected exhibitions
- Fourth Street Photo Gallery, New York, 1976 (solo)
- Just Imagine Gallery, Austin, Texas, 1977
- Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, 1977
- California Institute for the Arts, 1979
- San Francisco Camerawork, 1981 (solo)
- "Grant Park," Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 1984
- Society for Contemporary Photography, 1985
- Edwynn Houk Gallery, Chicago, 1985
- "Descriptions," Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 1985
- "Road and Roadside," Museum of Illinois, Springfield, 1987
- "Road and Roadside," Art Institute of Chicago, 1987
- "Road and Roadside," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1988
- "The Illinois Photographers' Project," Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 1987
- "Gates of Eden: Americans and the Land," Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, June and July 1988 (one-person)
- "Chicago: Inside and Out," Art Institute of Chicago, 1989
- "Changing Chicago," Chicago Historical Society, 1989
- "New Photography," The Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1998
Bibliography
- Hales, Peter Bacon (1984). Silver Cities: The Photography of American Urbanization, 1839–1915 (Revised and enlarged edition, 2006 ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
- Hales, Peter Bacon (1984). William Henry Jackson. London: Macdonald and Co., Ltd.
- Hales, Peter Bacon; Mark Klett, photographer (1990). One City/Two Visions: San Francisco. San Francisco: Bedford Arts Publishers.
- Hales, Peter Bacon (1993). Construction the Fair: Charles Dudley Arnold and the World's Columbian Exposition. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago.
- Hales, Peter Bacon; Bob Thall, photographer (1994). The Perfect City: Photographs and Meditations. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Hales, Peter Bacon (1999). Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project. Champaign-Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Hales, Peter Bacon; Stu Cohen (2007). The Likes of Us: Photography and the Farm Security Administration. Boston: David R. Godine.
- Hales, Peter Bacon (2014). Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America From Hiroshima to Now (2014 ed.). London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
References
- ^ "Biography - Peter Bacon Hales".
- ^ 'Thomas Bender, "Pioneers of the Urban Image," New York Times Book Review,October 21, 1984, p.1; Robert Levine, "Semiotics for the Historian: Photographers as Cultural Messengers," Reviews in American History vol. 13, #3 (Sept. 1985), pp. 380–385.'
- ^ George H. Roeder, Jr. "Filling in the Picture: Visual Culture," Reviews in American History, Vo. 26, #1 (March 1998), p. 284.
- ^ Wolfgang Kurt Hermann Panofsky, "Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project," Journal of Cold War Studies 3.1 (2001), pp. 130–132.
- ^ UIC Art History Department, Faculty Profiles, Peter Hales Archived April 3, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved March 10, 2009.
- ^ "Peter Bacon Hales". Archived from the original on September 3, 2014. Retrieved August 28, 2014.
- ^ Wisby, Gary (August 27, 2014). "Long-time art history professor killed in bicycling accident". news.uic.edu. University of Illinois at Chicago. Retrieved August 28, 2014.
- ^ Mitchell Schwarzer, Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion (Princeton: Princeton Architecture Press, 2004), Hales, Atomic Spaces; Miles Orvell and Jeffrey L. Meikle, eds., Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture (New York: Rodopi, 2009).
External links
- Peter Hales UIC Art History Department faculty profile
- Peter Hales' homepage
- The Chicago Imagebase Project, begun in 1995 and codirected with Robert Bruegmann
- Levittown: Images of an Ideal Suburb; a project involving the solicitation of materials from founders and residents
- Stone Ridge man killed in car-bicycle accident