New Book by Joshua Lutz Praised by the New York Times
Orange Blossom Trail combines Lutz’s recent photos with text by author George Saunders.
In his latest monograph, Lutz collaborates with writer George Saunders (winner of the Man Booker Prize and MacArthur Award), whose text complements Lutz’s photographs to “offer an alternately poetic and searing evocation of the cruelty and tender beauty of contemporary American life.”
The New York Times Book Review recently praised the book for its content and context:
“Orange Blossom Trail is a meditation, in two voices, on the alienation of the industrialized landscape and the brutality of American inequality.
“Not quite an illustrated Saunders, nor an annotated Lutz, this bizarre almost-collaboration confronts the demoralizing American grind with an attitude between sympathy and resignation. An attitude that’s rare in art because we seldom admit it to ourselves.”
Associate Professor of Photography Joshua Lutz is an artist and educator working primarily in photography and text. His monographs include Mind The Gap (2018 Schilt), Hesitating Beauty (2013, Schilt), and Meadowlands (2008, Powerhouse). Lutz is also a co-chair of the Contemplative Studies minor.
Lutz’s books have been named Best Art Books by Time Magazine, Photo District News, and PhotoEye, among others.
Awards and fellowships include The Aaron Siskind Fellowship, American Photography, Hudson Year Fellowship, Tierney Fellowship, Communication Arts, and PDN 30.
Solo shows include Clamp Art (New York), Koch Gallery (San Francisco), Blue Sky Lutz (Portland), Robert Morat (Hamburg), and Robert Morat (Berlin).
He has served on the faculty for The MFA Program at Bard College, The International Center of Photography, Pratt Institute in addition to Purchase.
More About Orange Blossom Trail
Lutz and Saunders first met on a magazine assignment, where they discovered a shared interest in both the psychological and material conditions of the laboring individual and in the Buddhist teachings of attachment and the sacredness of existence.
Through Lutz’s recent photos and three texts selected by Saunders from different moments in his career, the book asks, when do we zoom in and when do we zoom out from the individual lives whose labor supports other lives.