The tradition of landscape photography is explored in this volume, published in conjunction with a traveling exhibit conceived and organized by art historian Sandra Phillips. The rapid advance of industrialization is documented, along with the ever-increasing human encroachment on the environment. The photography of land use--as depicted by the work of largely obscure journeymen--is of more weight in this study than the better known tradition of artistic landscape photography represented by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. The most arresting images are those made by people who have been long forgotten, like George H. Johnson's daguerreotype of miners laboring on the American River near Sacramento, California.
Product Description
Poignant and provocative, Crossing the Frontier is the first major photographic exploration of human use, development, and abuse of the Western landscape. Published to accompany a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art exhibition, the photographs in Crossing the Frontier are powerful, vivid, and unsentimental, spanning almost 150 years and including both found images and works by major classic and contemporary photographers. Also featured are essays on the photography, geology, mythology, and architecture of the West by four distinguished authors. In stark contrast to photography books that carefully present nature at its most pristine, Crossing the Frontier finds beauty in the devastation of the terrain, and explores the complex social, political, and cultural ramifications of this transformation.
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