About Chris Glickman and The Last American Pastoral
oratorie%20logo_edited.jpg)
Chris Glickman is a New York-based artist working with photography and text. His practice examines how myth, historical inheritance, and visual culture inform collective identity.
The Last American Pastoral, his latest project, is a sustained reflection on American self-image and the role of myth in shaping how history, power, and identity are understood. Interrogating the Classical Western canon, the work examines how it has shaped America’s self-image and where its myths continue to reside: in architecture, landscape, and the aesthetics of institutional authority. Rather than offering narrative resolution, the work lingers in suspenseful uncertainty, tracing the quiet erosion of inherited forms and revealing how ideals are maintained long after their foundations begin to fracture.
We have been collaborating with Chris throughout the project, and are proud to be both launching his book published by @friendeditions on Friday @reference.point, and showing an exhibition of the photography opening on Thursday the 26th of February @laboratorie.studio. we spoke to Chris about the backbone of The Last American Pastoral; research and borderline obsession. Find the full interview below
Interview with Chris Glickman
You’ve emphasized the importance of this project and its growing relevance amid ongoing developments in the United States. What aspects of the subject, in particular, most fascinate you?
When I first started working as a photographer in my late teens, I found myself spending long stretches of time in Utah doing homestays with Mormon families. This experience of co-existing with those of an entirely opposite ideological foundation, and the tension there within, provoked an obsession of sorts. We occupied the same physical space but lived on different planes. Part of the fascination was that their world seemed to be filled with a sort of magic, combined with a confidence of purpose that I had never witnessed before. They were living in myth.
Around this time, I started to read the holy books of Abrahamic religions. I read the Book of Mormon and plenty of American history. I learned about westward expansion, militia movements and sovereign citizens. At that point I was planning on studying theology but got sidetracked and ended up working as an art director. The interest grew dormant as other things took focus, but when I had the opportunity to work on my own art again, this was the subject I couldn’t stop thinking about, which normally dictates what I choose to work on.
From the opinion of an observer, It doesn’t feel like a project driven by other photographic works, but rather one shaped by literature and painting. What influences guided you in building the visual world we’re looking at?
You are correct in the assertion that there were essentially no photographic references used throughout this project. From a thesis point of view one of the early triggers was the American illustrator Maxfield Parrish, who created surreal neoclassical tableaus while working in New Hampshire at the turn of the last century. This was less of a visual influence and more to do with the embodiment of the relationship between America and Grecian and Roman history (the classics). When it came to building the style I was looking at everything from Tintoretto and Vincent Desiderio’s paintings to Dorothea Tanning’s soft sculptures to the interiors of industrialists’ summer homes as well as countless films and books. In the period prior to and during the shooting I also did an extensive survey of both the history of American and European painting in person travelling through Italy, France, England and the Northeast of America but in honesty I probably would have been doing that either way.
I also introduced observational work throughout the series. This was done as a way to provide a level of objectivity that sits as a counter to the more formal and romantic narrative base of the project.
You cast men of a particular age for this. What do they represent in the project, and is there something in particular you're interested in in viewing masculinity?
One of the starting points for this project was the influence that the classical and neoclassical canons, as well as other forms of ‘great Western art’, have had on America's self-image. The choice to work with men for every role and character was a play on Shakespearean casting, as well as an acknowledgement of who, generally speaking, creates and controls myth in the West. If these same images were made with a different, more diverse cast, I believe the read on them would be quite skewed. What now might be viewed as critique could easily be seen as an attack.
Though this series did start with a central thesis, over the years of work it shifted and became more personal in some ways. One of the themes that developed was decline, disintegration, and reconciling what that means for myself and my body. Just as an empire, the body also lives through a cycle of genesis, ascension, fall, and eventual death. That is what the age of the men represents to me. In some ways, they are proxies for my own fears, insecurities, and worst impulses.
What is it about myth, and how people sculpt themselves to these (and/or their) 'stories', that is so alluring?
I've always been interested in both the theatre inherent in culture and how we frame and assign meaning to our lives. How those affect both collective and individual performance and behaviour. Myth has the ability to deprive history of context, removing material or political realities, making certain structures or institutions appear inevitable. That relationship to myth as a framework for historical justification or obfuscation is at the core of this series. In some ways it is about the tangible impact of the adoption of myth as fact and the philosophical reconciliation that needs to happen when reality stops reflecting what was promised to you.
About Book Launch and Fine Art Exhibition
Our show at (lab)oratorie offers a focused encounter with the images outside the context of the book and encourages a slower, more considered engagement with the work. Presented in the gallery space, the exhibition brings the photographs into a spatial setting, foregrounding their architectural and atmospheric qualities.
📍 Reference Point
2 Arundel St, Temple, London WC2R 3DA
6 February 2026 - 7pm - Midnight
📍 (lab)oratorie
7 Ezra St, London E2 7RH
26 February 2026 - 630pm - 1030pm