David Benjamin Sherry: American Monuments

DAVID BENJAMIN SHERRY: American Monuments is a landscape photography project that captures the spirit and intrinsic value of America’s threatened system of national monuments. In April 2017, an executive order called for the review of the twenty-seven national monuments created since January 1996. In December 2017, the final report called on the president to shrink four national monuments and change the management of six others, recommending that areas in Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans be offered for sale, specifically for oil drilling and coal and uranium mining. American Monuments focuses on the areas under review, with special emphasis on those that have already been decimated. 

Sherry documents these pristine, sacred, and wildly diverse areas using the traditional, historic 8 × 10-inch format. The resulting photographs not only convey the beauty of these important and ecologically diverse sites, but also shed light upon the plight of the perennially exploited landscape of the American West.