Andrew Moore

Andrew Moore investigates the intersections of historical moments found within specific locations. Through his vividly colored, large-scale photographs of architectural structures and landscapes across the world, including Cuba, Russia, Detroit, and the Great Plains of the American West, Moore captures a strong sense of place while also complicating our linear understanding of time.  

  In the Detroit series of decaying and derelict urban structures, the viewer becomes intensely aware of the passing of the years and the impact of economic depression. Yet, more than this, these environments seem to exist outside of temporal limits. We see dense foliage enveloping an old car wash, and a grove of birch trees growing from the ashes of books in a former storage facility, speaking not only to the forces of decomposition but also to the power of transformation and renewal.  Moore shows us that human existence takes place within a much longer timeline and a wider context than we are able to control. This is powerfully captured in his more recent series, Dirt Meridian, in which buildings and remnants of habitation appear as isolated objects within the seemingly limitless landscape of the West. 

Born in Connecticut in 1957, Moore lives and works in New York City. Since 2004 he has taught in the MFA photography program at the School of Visual Arts, and from 2001-2010 he was a visiting lecturer at Princeton University. Numerous prominent institutions have held solo exhibitions of Moore’s work, including the Akron Art Museum, the Queens Museum of Art, New York, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Colby College Museum of Art, and the National Building Museum, Washington D.C. In 2014 he was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

Moore’s work is represented in numerous public collections in the United States and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., the Israel Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Four monographs of his work have been published: Inside Havana (2002, Chronicle); Russia (2005, Chronicle); Detroit Disassembled (2010, Damiani); and Andrew Moore: Cuba (2012, Damiani).