Award-winning photojournalist, Phil Grout, to show over four decades of work at Birdie’s Café
By Kevin Dayhoff
Posted 11/05/10
Phil Grout, an award-winning photojournalist, fine art photographer, and author will appear for the opening of a retrospective show of his work at Birdie’s Cafe Gallery in Westminster, this evening.
The show titled “44/40,” spans over four decades of Grout’s work, from Vietnam to Africa, Plains Georgia, to Carroll County; and includes almost 70 pieces of work.
Since 1966 Grout has worked throughout North, South and Central America, Asia and Africa gathering images for newspapers, magazines, wire services, and book publishers.
According to his website,
philgrout.com, and a series of e-mail interviews, Grout said he “started to learn his craft as a photographer in 1966 working as a photojournalist for the U.S. Navy covering naval operations in
Vietnam.
“But I quickly learned it wasn’t the images of war I was hunting, but more the face of humanity as I roamed the back alleys of Saigon; Hong Kong; Sasebo, Japan and Olongopo, Philippines.”
With pictures and words Grout, “became a gatherer of the threads which bind us together as human beings.”
After the war, Grout “came home and settled in rural Maryland with his wife, Mary Lou, and worked for nearly 10 years as a photographer, reporter, and editor for the Hanover Evening Sun in Westminster.”
Since moving to Carroll County, Grout has authored three critically acclaimed photo essay books. His work has been awarded by the Associated Press as well as various arts organizations. It has also been featured in art galleries throughout the United States.”
According to Grout, “I fell in love with this land and its people who worked the land in my new rural home. That love pulled me away to Plains, Georgia in the late 70’s to complete my first book as I lived in an abandoned sharecropper’s home near President Jimmy Carter’s farm, and learned first hand the rigors of working the land and documenting the “tillers of the soil.”
His first venture into the book world won him national critical acclaim, including recognition from Publisher’s Weekly which called "A Spell in Plains" “a triumph.”
In the 1980’s Grout took his camera throughout the developing world in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and India documenting the work of various relief organizations.
A second book of photography, “Seeds of Hope,” “grew from the splinters left in the wake of a hurricane which cut a path through Nicaragua in 1988,” recalled Grout.
Grout then went on to live in Ghana, West Africa in 2002, with an extended family of cocoa farmers to create his latest book, “Harvest of Hope,” a portrait of those who toil to bring us chocolate.
Grout, who is also an avid gardener, is constantly pushing the artistic envelope in search of new and innovative ways to tell a story, over the past four decades he has explored drawing, blacksmithing, woodworking, papermaking, and new photographic processes in photography.
In a May 21, 1995 article in the Baltimore Sun, credits his father, Gerald C. Grout, for his interest in art and photography. “He’s the one who really got me into photography. He was a physician and a fine photographer. He had his own darkroom, and I used to watch him,” Grout told Sun writer, Ellie Baublitz.
At the time, the article in 1995 described Grout’s show at the Carroll County Arts Center, also a retrospective, “Jubilee: A Photographic Retrospective.”
“Like his father, Mr. Grout has a studio and darkroom in his Westminster home, where he develops prints, standard photos as well as what he calls ‘photoglyphs’ and an even newer image using handmade paper,” wrote Baublitz in 1995.
“His photographs capture people, animals, and nature, mostly in black and white, few in color, some as photoglyphs.
The photoglyphs are a relatively new method of developing prints that Mr. Grout discovered while experimenting with chemicals,” observed Baublitz.
“For those who have the time, Mr. Grout can tell the story behind (each of) his photographs.”
Indeed, his photographs all tell a short philosophical story about Grout’s worldwide travels in the four decades of a life rich in storytelling and experiences.
Grout is “Good picture shooter and a colleague in journalism… (We worked together) starting in the Navy and then at the Hanover Evening Sun… I have three or four walls covered with his work in my home…. (I) recommend you stop by and see his stuff,” said Carroll County Commissioner and fellow Vietnam veteran, Dean Minnich
Sherri Hosfeld Joseph, the owner of Birdie’s and an artist and critically acclaimed photographer herself, added, “Phil Grout is one of the greatest photojournalists of his generation. We are truly blessed as a community that he has chosen our stories to document. Phil has an amazing ability to find the extraordinary in everyday life - and this show, a retrospective of forty-four years of his work, will leave you awestruck.”
After his work in Africa, Phil returned to his first love, photojournalism, and newspapers in 2006, freelancing for Patuxent Publishing and its string of papers in central Maryland. His photo illustrations regularly appear in Carroll Magazine as well.
Phil’s photography and reporting have been awarded by the Associated Press, Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association as well as various arts organizations.
An opening reception for the artist will be held at Birdie’s Cafe, 233 E. Main St., Westminster, MD Friday, November 5, 2010, from 6-10 p.m. The exhibition will remain through Friday, December 31, 2010.
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