DAVID OTTENSTEIN
Farmscape #2, pigment ink print, 16" x 20"

David Ottenstein is a photographer from the Northeast, born in Pittsburgh and now living in New Haven, Connecticut. David graduated from Yale University in American Studies with a concentration in photography. He has been a freelance editorial and commercial photographer for over 20 years and is now shifting his focus to photograph subjects in a more instinctual way.

He has been working on a series of photographs focusing on the changing Iowa countryside. With these photographs of Iowa, David’s interest lies in the disappearance of the family farm. He notes a widespread change in the Iowa landscape: the replacement of the traditional farmstead with larger, centrally based factory farms. He writes in his artist statement, “ I discovered there, that the traditional structures which symbolize a way of life, foreign to me as a lifelong resident of the metropolitan northeast, yet central to so many of the values that have informed and shaped Americans, are disappearing.”

David Ottenstein's website

text and image from olsonlarsen.com