Michael Kolster, associate professor of art at Bowdoin, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to support his photographic project “Take Me to the River,” a collection of unique glass plate photographs that depict American rivers as amalgams of human and natural forces.

Kolster showed some of the work recently at Space Gallery in Portland.

The project began five years ago when Kolster began photographing the Androscoggin River in collaboration with associate professor of history and environmental studies Matthew Klingle. Kolster later expanded the project to the James River in Virginia and the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania.

With funding from the Guggenheim Foundation he now plans to bring the project west, to the Teton River in Idaho and the Los Angeles River in southern California.