landscapes in Maine, it is apparent that although
he is a traveler at heart, he remains so deeply
understanding of, and connected to a sense of
place. Using a large format 810-inch camera
capable of capturing fine details and a range of
tonal values, he approaches his subject matter in a
straight-forward manner and with a sensitivity to
the ever-changing landscape of small-town Amer-
ica. In an interview with John Paul Caponigro for
the July/August 1996 issue ofView Camera, Tice
said of the landscapes he photographs:
You can’t always go back, a lot of it has been erased.
The photograph is a record of it having existed. One of
the things I like about the photographs I do is that they
represent the history of this area...I think the photograph
becomes more important in time when the reality has
passed.Most of Tice’s childhood was spent in a trailer
with his mother traveling from New Jersey to Flor-
ida and back up the East Coast looking for work.
Though most of his early years were spent on the
road, he has called New Jersey home for more than
three decades and discovered the Garden State is
ripe with subject matter, which not only has engaged
him in an endless dialogue with the land since 1967,
but also has gained him a national reputation for his
treatment of the everyday, from diners to gas sta-
tions, storefront windows to parking lots. One of his
most iconic photographs, Petit’s Mobil Station,
Cherry Hill, NJ, 1974 from hisUrban Landscapes
series (1976), made while on both a National
Endowment for the Arts fellowship and Guggen-
heim fellowship, is a striking representation of the
gas station located on Kresson Road, a highly traf-
ficked street in the suburbs of Cherry Hill. Yet, he
has recorded the location in the evening hours
devoid of people. One is struck, not only by the
stillness and solitude of the image, but by the water
tower looming in the background. Tice, an observer
who is sensitive to the places he photographs,
records the tower in a manner that reveals its pro-
found gravity. It is a structure that he would return
to but in different towns, such as in his photograph
Water Tower, Rahway, NJ, December 1994.
Tice remembers it was the visits to his father’s
house that influenced his own desire to pick up a
camera. His father had albums of photographs that
he had taken and would also photograph the young
Tice during those visits. Tice became fascinated by
this method of documentation and at the age of 14
he purchased an inexpensive Kodak Baby Brownie
camera, joined the Cataret, New Jersey Camera
Club, and began to focus his energies on photogra-
phy. For a brief period, he studied commercial
photography at the Newark Vocational and Tech-
nical High School, but left to become a darkroom
assistant. When he was 17, Tice joined the U.S.
Navy and the following year was assigned to the
photography department. He worked in this ca-
pacity, taking publicity photographs, until 1959.
When a photograph he took of an explosion on
theU.S.S. Waspwas published in theNew York
Times, he received significant recognition. Edward
Steichen, then director of the photography depart-
ment at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New
York, saw the photograph and acquired it for
MoMA’s permanent collection. Tice eventually be-
came Steichen’s master printer and continued to
print for him until Steichen’s death in 1973. He had
gained a reputation for his technical skill in the
darkroom, which led him to be hired as the printer
of limited-edition portfolios for not only Steichen,
but also for several other photographers, among
them Francis Bruguie`re, Frederick H. Evans, and
Edward Weston.
For some time in the early 1960s, while married
and raising his children, Tice supported his family as
a home portrait photographer. During this period
he began to develop a strong interest in his own
projects, one of the first being a documentation of
the Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster, Pennsyl-
vania. This project, which would become one of his
most significant photo-essays, took more than nine
years to complete. InTwo Amish Boys, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, 1962, Tice almost effortlessly follows
two young boys, their backs turned away from the
camera, as they walk barefoot up a road in the
farmlands of their town. A large white barn-like
house sits in the distance and these boys casually
make their way down a road that appears to go on
forever. He published this work in 1968 asAmish
Portfolio: Twelve Original Photographs, but later
produced a complete version as a book titledFields
of Peace: A Pennsylvania German Album, 1970.
Since publishing this first book, Tice has embraced
the photography book as a medium for his ideas and
has published 13 books to date. They includePater-
son (1972); Seacoast Maine: People and Places
(1973);Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait
(1975);Urban Romantic: The Photographs of George
Tice(1982);Lincoln(1984);Hometowns: An Amer-
ican Pilgrimage(1988); andGeorge Tice: Selected
Photographs, 1953–1999(2001).
In 1972, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York gave Tice a solo show of his workPaterson,
NJ, a project for which he was awarded the Grand
Prix du Festival d’Arles in 1973. Tice said of this
work in his introduction toUrban Romantic, ‘‘In
Paterson, ‘the cradle of American industry,’ I saw aTICE, GEORGE