Invasive Basalt, Seal Rocks State Park, Oregon, from The Great Northwest Portfolio

About the Photographer

Toedtemeier, Terry

American, 1947-2008

Terry Toedtemeier completed a bachelors degree in geology at Oregon State University and his approach to photography was intertwined with his interests as a scientist. For Toedteimer, landscape photography, such as his of the American northwest and the Columbian River Gorge, could be simultaneously a scientific, aesthetic and even metaphysical inquiry, as the geological forms of a place touch on larger questions related to our understanding of space and time. He is best known as a photography curator at the Portland Art Museum, where he worked starting in 1985. He helped co-found the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland in 1975 and served as its co-director. Toedtemeier taught photography and studio courses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art from 1980 until his death in 2008.