Artist talk with Alexander Mouton

In 2013, 2016, and 2019, Alexander Mouton drove through Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Latvia photographing historical sites where Stalin and Hitler's murderous policies marked the land and architectural remnants of the subsequent Soviet occupations. On Wednesday, October 26 he will be presenting this work at PCNW which he developed into a limited-edition archive of thirteen different, related photo books, called To A Place of Time, Held Within Four Walls. Each photo book explores the unique possibilities of combining and juxtaposing images and texts according to its particular structure. How can new historical perspectives on the synergy between Hitler and Stalin’s terror resonate in the contemporary moment? With the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the 2021 US Capitol attack, this question is more pertinent now than ever.

Alexander Mouton has an MFA in photography from Indiana University, where he studied under Jeffrey Wolin. His background is in photography, film, literature, book arts, and digital media. For four years Alexander lived in Berlin directly following the fall of the Berlin Wall, during which time he was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship. In the early 2000's he developed his photographic processes to include net art, interactive video installations, and hypermedia performances. With a primary interest in sequencing images, Alexander's Unseen Press has been producing limited-edition photographic artists' books and photo zines since the nineties, many of which are in collections internationally including MoMA, NYC, the Getty Research Institute, LA, and the Kunst Bibliothek, Berlin. Alexander's time-based media is included in Rhizome.org's ArtBase and has been exhibited at SFcamerawork, the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, chico.art.net, Fylkingen Hz Journal #9, SpringgunPress issue 5, and Epoetry[2013] among other international venues. Currently, he is Associate Professor and Chair of the department of Art Art History & Design at Seattle University.

Host or Publisher Photographic Center Northwest