Ashton Thornhill’s solo photography show, Texas Noir, is up at The Grace Museum in Abilene in conjunction with the big group show As Is: Rural Realism. Both exhibitions depict the land-, town-, and city-scapes of Texas with some unexpected and darker poetry. The Texas-based Thornhill’s photographs in this series are gorgeous, silvery meditations on our civilization’s stoical yet not-quite-settled encroachment into the vastness of Thornhill’s chosen territory—the Panhandle and Western reaches of the state. He recently retired from teaching photography at Texas Tech in Lubbock after 29 years.
If you’re out driving though Texas over summer break (especially after dark), or have lived for in the state for very long, much of Thornhill’s Texas Noir imagery should be hauntingly familiar to you. Texas Noir will be up at The Grace through August 12. Here are a few of the images.
Plainview Parking Lot, Plainview, Texas, 2011, archival pigment print. Collection of the Grace Museum
Slaton Gin II, Slaton, Texas, 2003, archival pigment print
Meadow Gas Station, Meadow, Texas, 2015, archival pigment print
Ropesville Warehouse, Ropesville Texas, 2015, archival pigment print, collection of The Grace Museum
El Cheapo, Marfa, Texas, 2010, archival pigment print
Boxed Jesus, Abernathy, Texas, 2010, archival pigment print
Farmhouse, Ropesville, Texas, 2015, archival pigment print
Night Tracks, Ropesville, Texas, 2015, archival pigment print
