CED Circle Gallery Presents: With Rapture and Astonishment

Thursday July 27, 2023 | Megan Dupre <mdupre@uga.edu>

With Rapture and Astonishment: Reimagining the Bartram Trail

Twelve photographers follow in the footsteps of William Bartram to explore and visually reimagine a well-traveled landscape teeming with life.

With Rapture & Astonishment is a photography exhibition that takes its name from a quote by American artist, botanist, and ethnographer William Bartram, which he made upon reaching the summit of Wayah Bald in May of 1775. Here he “beheld with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence….”

On view in the Circle Gallery at the University of Georgia, June 24th through September 12th, 2023, this dynamic exhibition reflects the visual experiences of twelve artists as they traveled in Bartram’s footsteps. Each artist worked in the spirit of curiosity, exploration, and wonder while reimagining this well-traveled landscape.

Featuring images from coastal Georgia to North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, With Rapture & Astonishment invites viewers to enter an intimate world where Bartram’s trail is alive and waiting to be met and listened to anew.

A public reception for With Rapture and Astonishment will be held Saturday, August 5th, 3 - 6 pm in conjunction with the 2023 Bartram Trail Conference.

With Rapture and Astonishment is the second in a series of exhibitions for the Listening to the Land project. Listening to the Land is a community collaboration facilitated by the Kinship Photography Collective in partnership with the Blue Ridge Bartram Trail Conservancy, Bartram Trail Conference, The Bascom: A Center for Visual Arts, and the Circle Gallery at the University of Georgia. Through workshops, nature walks, community exhibitions, and online engagement, photographers of all levels are invited to help create an archive of images that will bring to light the delicate, beautiful, and sometimes threatened ecosystems that often go unobserved.