Tristan Duke: Glacial Optics

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.

A complex examination from the artist about the choices we have made about how to use our Western lands and the implications of those decisions…. The experience is one of immersion and disorientation, a series of otherworldly landscapes.

— Rebecca Senf, Chief Curator, Center for Creative Photography

David Maisel’s Proving Ground comprises aerial and on-site photographs made at Dugway Proving Ground, a vast military compound in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. A primary mission of Dugway is to develop, test, and implement chemical and biological weaponry and defense programs. 

The Pentagon granted Maisel access to Dugway to photograph the terrain, testing facilities, and zones of toxic weapons deployment. Proving Ground is a critical response to the formal and political aspects of Dugway, in Maisel’s words, a “hidden, walled-off, and secret site that offers the opportunity to reflect on who and what we are collectively, as a society.” 

Limited edition of this book available HERE

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

The State of Water is a physically striking volume, suggesting the monumental infrastructures many of the images depict.

— Steve Harp, PhotoBook Journal

Brad Temkin brings attention to the visual and ecological beauty of the transformation of water, by showing the structures and processes that most people do not even think about. Most storm water runoff is considered waste; yet more than 700 cities reclaim and re-use wastewater and storm water with combined sewer systems, recycling it for agricultural uses and even drinking water. As we mimic nature and separate the impurities like sludge or salt or chemicals, a transformation occurs.

Temkin is less concerned with a structure’s use, or whether the water pictured is pure or waste. He is drawn instead to the strangeness of these forms and the distorted sense of scale. Moving beyond mere description, Temkin embraces the abstract and at times surreal landscape of water transformation.

Limited edition of this book available HERE