Bolton Hill resident Mark Luthringer is a photographer, painter, and writer who is busy documenting the world in which we live in a most unique and engaging way. His body of work consists of a string of projects that are commentaries on our times, focusing mainly on the human-made landscapes of American suburbia.
Luthringer’s artistic life started with a degree in photography when he graduated from the Arts Institute of Chicago in the early 1990’s. Early in his career, he found success with commercial photography. Later, he moved into writing and editing as a way to pay the bills. And today, his time with photography and painting is spent solely in lofty artistic expression. “Not beholden to anyone, I can do whatever I want. I can follow my muses.”
Through his photography, Luthringer explores themes that revolve around familiar scenes, such as in the series My Life in Office Parks. “I’m obsessed with office parks. I have photographs of over 700 sites,” he says. The pieces are sometimes presented individually, one office park per image, like a portrait. Other times a group of photographs are combined, as part of a grid. They are complex, both as images and as conceptual art. The compositions and the colors are subdued, with straight architectural lines and plenty of concrete grey. There is carefully landscaped foliage in the designs, but there are no people. Luthringer says that they have been described as “both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.”
This is true of other themes he explores, such as the signage for suburban housing communities (Ridgemont Typologies) or landscapes featuring infrastructure elements (40 Monuments to Progress). These are themes that Luthringer explores completely, in depth and from various angles. Luthringer plays with repetition and variations on a theme, with close attention to both the literal sense of place in his subject as well as the aesthetics around composition and color of each individual work. The grids, a straightforward presentation of the subject, are a document, a record of a time and place, allowing viewers to bring their own thoughts and memories to the work.
Luthringer’s studio occupies the lower level of his home in Linden Green, which he shares with his partner Christine Kent and their cats. Christine is a content creator and writer, who is active in neighborhood associations, currently serving on the architecture committee for the Atrium HOA. Both came to Baltimore from years of living in the San Francisco Bay area. When they decided to move back east (Luthringer grew up in Washington DC, and Christine in New York), Baltimore appealed to them immediately. The convenient east coast location was a selling point.
An avid cyclist and hiker, Luthringer loves the convenience of “the country” being just 15 miles north. When looking for a place to settle within the city, Luthringer says, “I first looked here in Bolton Hill, and I never looked anywhere else.” Luthringer and Kent have been here now for eight years, and among other things, they love the friendliness of the Bolton Hill community. According to Luthringer, “Socializing at the many neighborhood events has brought me out of my shell. Bolton Hill has so many interesting people, so many artists, everyone has an interesting thing they are doing.”
Opportunities to see Luthringer’s work include a group show at Goucher College in February which will include his recent paintings on the office park theme. Also at Goucher, a solo show is being planned for September 2028. Virtually, you can see the range and depth of Luthringer’s work in all the aforementioned themes on his website https://www.markluthringer.net/ and don’t forget to check the BHCA Facebook and Instagram pages for more images from Luthringer’s portfolio.
–Francine Marchese
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