黑料不打烊

A comparative view of the American West from 1866 to the present, this exhibition examines the role of photography in popularizing divergent ideas and documenting changing visions of the West. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the West has stood out as a destination and center for photographic activity. Spectacular vistas combined with unique land formations and bright, clear light attracted early photographers to record the natural beauty of the West for the enjoyment of local and East coast audiences. Famous for his large format images, Carleton Watkins created images of the natural abundance of the majestic views of Yosemite. This appeal for images of wonder and exploration influenced a second generation of 20th century landscape photographers predisposing them to the notion of the West as a sublime and spiritual 鈥淕arden of Eden.鈥� Photographers like J. Smeaton Chase, Stephen H. Willard and Edward Curtis found a 鈥渘ew frontier鈥� in the most unlikely place鈥攖he desert regions of the West. While Chase and Willard focused their lenses on capturing the spiritual essence of a barren landscape, Curtis turned his attention to what he and many believed to be a vanishing ancient culture of the Native Americans.

Modernists Ansel Adams and Brett Weston credited the natural light and wide-open landscape of California as a major influence in the development of the sharp-focused, modernist style of photography of the Group f/64, group while contemporary photographers introduced new techniques into their images of the West. Influenced by Thomas Moran and other epic painters of the American western landscape, David Hockney introduced the photo collage in his largescale photographic collage of the Grand Canyon, foreshadowing the widespread use of digital photography. Contemporary photographers such as Richard Misrach, Jack Fulton and Mark Klett photographs present us with conflicting notions of beauty and grandeur and man鈥檚 impact on the Western environment. Influenced by the nineteenth-century tradition of photographing engineering and railroad developments in the West, Mark Ruwedel鈥檚 contemporary images of the remnants of these early railroads and their impact on the land comes full circle.

Organized from the museum鈥檚 permanent collection, this exhibition includes more than 45 photographs by nearly 40 artists focusing on recent acquisitions to this growing and important collection.