Steven B. Smith: Your Mountain Is Waiting

I think of “social geography” as a term to describe my photographic work and methodology…The photographs that I produce question traditional and clichéd notions of landscape, our place within it, and the collective roles and responsibilities in how and why we shape it the way we do.

— Victoria Sambunaris

Her first book in over ten years, Victoria Sambunaris: Transformation of a Landscape shares the nuance and majesty of the artist’s practice in a large-scale book format. Each year, Sambunaris structures her life around a photographic journey traversing the American landscape. Equipped with a 5×7-inch field camera, film, a video camera, and research material, she crosses the country alone by car for several months. Her large-scale photographs capture the continuing transformation of the American landscape with specific attention given to expanding political, technological, and industrial interventions.

Part of her ongoing, twenty-year series Taxonomy of a Landscape, this book encompasses the past decade of work, including collected ephemera that form the essential and incidental elements of her practice as a photographer and researcher. Also featured are archival documentation of experiences and observations on the road, such as snapshots, maps, road logs, journals, geology and history books, mineral specimens, and artifacts. This title follows her first book with Radius, Taxonomy of a Landscape.

Browse upcoming events with the artist here.

Model Citizens considers the US as a case study into a global phenomenon: how have staging, performance, and roleplay come to inform thinking about citizenship in a violent land whose people no longer agree on what is true?

The last in a trilogy of books on the American condition, Model Citizens includes photographs from US Border Patrol Academy training scenarios, “Save America” rallies, and history museums. Jarringly juxtaposed images from these apparently unrelated sites illuminate systems that reconcile, justify, or distract from the harsh realities of life in a polarized, militarized society. The design accentuates slippages: images flow across French-fold page turns, just as Cornwall’s practice questions the role of documentary photography in an era of splintered realities.

The Model Citizens project was awarded the 2023 Prix Elysée, a biennial juried prize for mid-career photographers, sponsored by the Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. The award also includes a grant for a concurrent publication in both English and French (Citoyens Modèles, Éditions Textuel, 2024). Both editions were released to coincide with Les Rencontres d’Arles de la Photographie in 2024.

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

”Each body of work has references to our individual and collective memories, and the idea that we hold on to some images while, over time, let go of others.”  

— Bill Jacobson

Photographs by Bill Jacobson
Poem by Maureen N. McLane

Softbound with jacket
11.75 x 14.5 inches

92 pages / 39 color images
ISBN: 9781934435939

Trade: $65
Rare, Signed: $150

The limited-edition black cover version of this book is sold out. 

Limited edition of this book available HERE