An experimental documentary about time, place, creation, beauty, order, and the lifelong accumulation of knowledge as expressed through the lives of four older men living in Wisconsin: a farmer, a dancer, a poet and a retired factory worker. The chaos, complexity and transcendent nature of the four men’s lives appear at odds with the values widely accepted by the general population. Evidence of millions of small, quietly made choices can be observed in their surroundings and visible in our photographs. A composite portrait emerges from the words and images we collected during our ongoing visits over the past decade. Catalog for a traveling exhibition and 16 mm film. (October 2008).

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Portraits and landscapes consider the occupations and preoccupations of Wisconsin people. Shimon and Lindemannn traveled around the state in their 1962 Ramber Cross County Station Wagon to make these photographs with an 8x10 Deardorff. From farmers to artists in small towns and cities from Manitowoc to Milwaukee, the artists found that global issues and concerns infiltrated even the remotest places. Brief stories accompany many of the portraits which are interspersed with landscapes made in the early 21st century. An essay “Feed Mill” by acclaimed Wisconsin author Michael Perry adds to the regional gravitas. Shimon and Lindemann have been photographing people in Wisconsin for more than 20 years. (December 2008).

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Wisconsin photographers John Shimon and Julie Lindemann have made a career of conflating the contemporary with the historical. In the portraits that form the bulk of their oeuvre, they make use of antique cameras, modern lens technology, artificial light, and contemporary pop culture to create portraits of the people in their native state. The result is rich and subtly modulated prints with deep resonances in the history of portraiture. The exhibition juxtaposes 43 of their original photographs and a multimedia installation with 54 portraits from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Collection, including daguerreotypes, as well as photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, and Larry Clark, among others, to present new perspectives on one of the oldest artistic genres—portraiture. Unmasked & Anonymous is the result of a two-year collaboration between John Shimon and Julie Lindemann and Milwaukee Art Museum curator Lisa Hostetler. This catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture on view at the Milwaukee Art Museum August 14 through November 30, 2008.

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View camera portraits of "obscure midwestern denizens" interspersed with writings and documents. The photographs capture the flavor of the landscape and the quiet melancholy realties of American rural and small town life. Catalog for It Takes One to Know One exhibition at Sarah Bowen Gallery (September 2006).

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