Bard News

Orange Blossom Trail, a Collaboration between Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05 and George Saunders, Reviewed in the New York Times

On the left, a man in a brown shirt holds an open book in his hands. On the right, the cover of the book Orange Blossom Trail, which features an orange covered in snails.

Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05 and the cover of his new book, Orange Blossom Trail.

Orange Blossom Trail, a new book of photography by Bard alumnus Joshua Lutz ’97 MFA ’05, documents the lives of workers along a 400-mile stretch of highway from Georgia to Miami. Three texts by author George Saunders accompany Lutz’s photographs, which display an “austere frankness,” writes Walker Mimms in a review for the New York Times. “Though not without dignity—see Lutz’s portraits of fruit inspectors, as they glance up from a conveyor belt of tumbling oranges—his photos lack any social agenda,” Mimms continues, an effect that is emphasized by inclusion of the Saunders texts. Mimms walks away surprised not only by the collaboration itself, but its commitment to portraying “the demoralizing American grind with an attitude between sympathy and resignation. An attitude that’s rare in art because we seldom admit it to ourselves.”