Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado

Drawing primarily from the vast permanent collection of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States.

From the earliest photographic records of human habitation to the latest aerial and digital imagery, from nearly uninhabited desert and isolated mountainous territories to suburban sprawl and densely populated cities, this compilation offers an increasingly nuanced perspective on the American landscape. Divided by region, these photographs address ways in which different histories and traditions of land use have given rise to different cultural transitions: from the Midwestern prairies and agricultural traditions of the South, to the riverine systems in the Northeast, and the environmental challenges and riches of the far West. 

American Geography provides a complex, thought-provoking survey featuring work from Robert Adams, Dawoud Bey, Barbara Bosworth, Debbie Fleming Caffery, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Terry Evans, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Emmet Gowin, Lee Friedlander, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Trevor Paglen, Wendy Red Star, Mark Ruwedel, Victoria Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, and Carleton E. Watkins, among others.

This book is SOLD OUT

He captures the spirit of the explorer’s dark, wide-eyed vision with a critical distance.

— Jordan G. Teicher, Photograph Magazine

Much of Mark Klett’s work as a photographer has centered on a conversation with historical images. For this project, Klett worked only with the account of a young mining engineer named Raphael Pumpelly, who wrote of his journey through Arizona and Mexico in 1861 on the Camino del Diablo or “the road of the devil.” Pumpelly found the territory lawless and filled with danger. Mexican laborers working in the silver mines south of Tucson were perpetually killing their Anglo bosses, and the authorities were virtually non-existent. The Apache led constant raids and ambushes. Pumpelly escaped death several times, often by a matter of minutes. Traveling 130 miles of open desert, he proceeded with both apprehension of the dangers at hand, and appreciation of the natural beauty that surrounded him.

152 years later, Klett traversed the same route, making photographs in response to Pumpelly’s words. Unable to trace the engineer’s exact steps, Klett created images that are not literal references to specific places or events. Rather, he sought to produce a more poetic narrative to their shared experience of the Arizona desert, along the common route that connects the two through time.

Today, most of the Camino is located on the Barry M. Goldwater Bombing Range and the border is a militarized zone constantly patrolled by government agents and crisscrossed by air and ground forces practicing for war. Camino travelers often hide from detection, be they immigrants or drug smugglers moving North under the cover of night or the ruggedness of the terrain. Indian reservations create boundaries and mark other cultural divides. A hostile climate kills many who dare travel in hot weather and people die each year on the Camino, most from exposure. Yet the Camino also crosses one of the most beautiful and still wild regions of the Sonoran Desert.

Limited edition of this book available HERE

Mr. Klett’s artful and striking photographs often parse the most minute details: a broken windowpane, a bent nail, .50-caliber bullets found at the machine-gun range. These fragments stand in for Wendover, just as the base stands in for the birth of nuclear destruction.

— Dana Jennnings, The New York Times 

In Hiroshima, Japan, a twisted steel dome is grim reminder of a city destroyed by the first atomic bomb used in warfare. It is a history no one dares to forget. Halfway around the globe in the Utah/Nevada border stands another ruin, the airplane hangar inside of which the bomber that carried the Hiroshima bomb was readied for its mission.

Wendover Airbase, once the world’s largest, now crumbles from neglect. The stories and relics at Wendover describe more than the past, they also point to a historic cycle; to a present filled with new apprehensions that carry the potential for a chilling future.

Artist Mark Klett, known for his ongoing exploration of landscape, history and the passage of time through the medium of photography, and William L. Fox, a celebrated science and art writer whose work has focused on human cognition and memory, team up to create a fascinating visual and verbal multi-layered portrait of Wendover Airbase and the experience of memory in relation to the use of the atomic bomb by the American military in World War II.

Landscape, culture, and re-photography in Eadweard Muybridge’s illustrations of Central America

Photographs by Byron Wolfe and Scott Brady

Hardcover with booklet
12.25 x 10.25 inches
228 pages / 130 images

Trade ISBN: 9781942185147
Signed ISBN: 9781955161633

Co-published with Temple University Press