John Pfahl: Arcadia Revisited

In the mid-1980s, the internationally renowned photographer John Pfahl re-explored Niagara Fallsand a thirty-six mile stretch of the Niagara River for a project commissioned by the Amos W. Sangster Niagara River Centennial Committee to celebrate Sangster’s landmark folios of 153 etchings, Niagara River and Falls from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, published 1886-88.  Pfahl revisited many of same sites that Sangster depicted in order to produce awe-inspiring twentieth-century images that also reflect nineteenth-century concepts of the picturesque.  Pfahl’s exquisite photographs evoke surprising emotions, proving that he, of all artists, was able to transcend the overdone cliché of Niagara Falls to produce work that is truly moving.