Happy New Year! This month we are showcasing Kirk Hostetter. Kirk has been a PCNW Member since 2019. He has been working on two exciting projects involving the Duwamish River and living in times of quarantine.
Kirk Hostetter – Member since 2019
What are you working on?
I am currently working on a project involving the Duwamish River, which originated as a collaboration with Wittman Estes Architecture (https://www.duwamishcrossing.net). I am examining the River as an historical, social, and psychological geography by considering the implications of its reduced watershed; its industrialization, urbanization, and alterations; the various attempts made toward recovery; and the evolving access to its banks by the people who live there. As an explorer I have been seeking out the many moments along the water, and along its original meandering path, that allow us to slip between the layers of what was, what is, and what might be.
Selected images here: https://www.kirkhostetter.com/duwamish
My recently completed book, Quarantine Portraits (An Isolated Collaboration of Friends and Objects), compiles portraits of friends and colleagues with objects of their choosing that gained significance to them during COVID’s strange quarantined spring of 2020. These socially distanced photographs represent a directly personal investigation of people’s connections to the items with which they choose to surround themselves. In the book I have paired my portraits with my subject’s text and their own images.
Book here: https://www.blurb.com/b/10481101-quarantine-portraits
Online version here: https://www.kirkhostetter.com/quarantine-portraits
Artist Statement
As an architect I am interested in environments that humans construct for themselves, their uses, intimacies and implications, and how time imprints and alters these relationships. My ongoing project on the Duwamish River is a direct result of these interests, as well as an extension of years spent on the industrialized rivers of my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
To learn more about Kirk’s photography, click here
Many thanks to Kirk for submitting work this month! If you’re a member of PCNW and would like to share your photographs, we’d love to hear from you. Complete our online form by the 15th of every month and a jury will review your work for consideration. Not a PCNW Member yet? You can join online today!
