Excerpt from Pfahl's artist statement for Arcadia Revisited, June 1989

"Before I even began to photograph, I immersed myself in all the historical, geographic, and aesthetic data on the river I could find...Would it still be possible to find the nineteenth century lurking in forgotten corners, bypassed by the exigencies of modern time? And, much more practically, would these magical places still be accessible or would they be blocked by that modern nemesis of photography, the chain-link fence?...Indeed, certain areas, most notably around Goat Island, had even reverted from a melange of paper mills and tourist snares to a more natural, even idyllic appearance . . . Even the later panoramas were effortlessly organized into familiar European conventions as if the river, in some time-jumbling way, were the progenitor for all those idyllic schemata that have been passed from one era and continent to the next...Almost every photograph contains at least one revealing detail that anchors the scene securely in the present...The Niagara River is well known to be one of the most toxic waterways on the continent. Its banks glisten with overt and covert seepage of the most deadly persuasion. There is an almost unbearable irony to the act of recording an achingly romantic meeting of shadowy forest and luminous water while suffering the stench of untreated sewage dripping nearby...Perhaps these devastating issues are peripheral to the thrust of this body of work and can best be confronted in other venues, but disquieting thoughts will inevitably figure into the ultimate meaning of these images."

 

Excerpt f rom an interview with John Pfhal for Arcadia Revisited

"So they might look at the photograph and say, 'Where did you take that photograph? That's an aspect of the river I didn't know existed.'...The Niagara River was one of the places where people came in the nineteenth century to express themselves in painting and etching. It had all those things that were important: the drama, the picturesqueness, the wholesomeness— . . . Actually, this is still there, underneath the new 90s layer of chemical plants, tourist facilities and highways. But if you get off the road and look around, the nineteenth century still seems to be working in these places...I like to get out. I responded to that aspect of the nineteenth century artist who went into the scene, carrying their canvas with them rather than working in a studio . . . And the idea of observing a place over a period of time is important to me. I think that I understand a place better . . . The Niagara River, which is much shorter than the Columbia—in fact, it's technically not supposed to be a river, it's supposed to be a straight--it's only 26 miles long and yet it has an enormous variety of scenes and dramatic changes in it . . . You can't avoid looking at the river as a narrative. Those are all places, not only to they have a narrative that one could guess by just looking at them, but they also have a lot of narratives connected with them in terms of the topology of the region and of the daredevils and the people who went down. So, when you look at those places, you always think and remember some of the history . . . So it sort of goes through this enormous turmoil, and exhaustively slinks into Lake Ontario...I was going to say that in a way I think of the river as being almost operatic...I let the river suggest the photograph...It seems to me that at least in the early 19th century, there was so much more optimism about the meaning of the landscape. It was used to symbolize the higher aspirations of humankind. Now, when we take a picture of a river, we know all about the problems with chemicals and pollution. I can understand where it might seem a travesty to some to make a pretty picture of it. There is an almost unbearable irony to the act of photographing an achingly romantic stretch of luminous water while suffering from the stench of raw sewage dripping quietly from a nearby overhand. How can one possibly convey that contradiction in a gallery or book of photographs? A scratch n' sniff patch affixed to the print?"

 

Excerpt from an article by Sebby Wilson Jacobson, Rochester Times-Union, August 3, 1989

"Because that stench eludes film, most scenes from the RMSC show look unabashedly beautiful and blatantly romantic. Many of them celebrate the many textures of the water itself, changing magically with the light and season: from a golden cloud of mist above Horseshoe falls, to turbulent froth pierced by a rainbow while tumbling over rocks; from a whirlpool as a gray and sleek as a pewter platter to the American Falls gushing behind a mound of ice and snow . . . A few of the photographs suggest a less benign, more ironic point of view. Seen from Beaver Island through trees in the foreground, a chemical plant sends a plume of smoke into the hazy sky. In the plum-colored light of evening, the lights of a distant chemical plant look festive and cheery beside the dark, bushy mass of Navy island. But in this series, Pfahl makes his most effective environmental statement by recording scenes of sheer beauty."