Edward Burtynsky
Olafur Eliasson
Andy Goldsworthy
Rosemary Laing
David Maisel
Sally Mann
Simon Norfolk
John Pfahl
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Contemporary Landscape Photography
Contemporary Landscape Photography
Shifting Terrain: Contemporary Landscape Photography features the work of seventeen notable artists, including Edward Burtynsky, Olafur Eliasson, Andy Goldsworthy, Rosemary Laing, David Maisel, Sally Mann, Simon Norfolk, John Pfahl, and Hiroshi Sugimoto.
Drawn from Wadsworth Atheneum's permanent collection and several private collections, some of the photographs recall nineteenth-century landscape traditions while others chart new thematic and geographic territory.
The awe-inspiring scenery captured in large albumen prints by nineteenth-century photographers Carleton E. Watkins and William Henry Jackson is echoed in serene and subtly toned gelatin silver prints of Rena Bass Forman. American landscape painting traditions of the picturesque and of invented compositions are evoked in Rosemary Laing's groundspeed series, where a giant carpet has been applied to a forest floor. In contrast, Edward Burtynsky is concerned with environmental devastation caused by industrial waste, such as his 2000 series documenting shipbreaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh; Simon Norfolk has focused his lens on sites scarred by human atrocities, such as Bosnia's minefields and mass graves. Looking at the landscape from a different angle, David Maisel's aerial views of Utah's Great Salt Lake and its industrialized surroundings are jewel-colored abstractions.
On Thursday, August 3, Joanna Marsh, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, will give a 6:00 p.m. gallery talk on Shifting Terrain as part of Phoenix Art After Hours: First Thursdays at the Atheneum.
Shifting Terrain: Contemporary Landscape Photography is made possible in part by the members of the Contemporary Coalition: Mickey Cartin, The Cheryl Chase and Stuart Bear Family Foundation, Emilie and Raul R. de Brigard, Howard and Sandra Fromson, Nancy D. Grover and Robinson A. Grover, Carol and Sol LeWitt, Jeffrey G. and Marcia Reid Marsted, The Ritter Foundation, The Saunders Foundation, Philip and Robin Schonberger, and Linda Cheverton Wick and Walter Wick.
Additional support is provided by the Greater Hartford Arts Council's United Arts Campaign and by the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism.
Image: Edward Burtynsky, Shipbreaking #31, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2001. Chromogenic print. Gift of Janice and Mickey Cartin, 2004.31.81.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main Street Hartford, CT 06103