Joe Deal. Flint Hills, 2005. Private collection. Copyright Joe Deal.
The University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography (CCP) is a world-class research and archive institution located in a state-of-the-art facility in the Fine Arts section of campus. It possesses 80,000 works by 2,000 artists: photographs, negatives, albums, work prints, manuscripts, audio-visual material, contact sheets, correspondence and memorabilia. It also mounts important exhibits throughout the year, free and accessible to all.
Though the tradition of black and white landscape photography is represented in the minds of many by the majestic work of Ansel Adams whose archives are retained by CCP there is an entirely different school that focuses not on nature in its pristine glory but instead on nature in the grip of human intervention.
One of the champions of this new way of interpreting the land through the eye of a camera lens is Joe Deal, who was a member of the team that originally created New Topographics in the 1970s. In West on West: Reimagining the Great Plains, he equates his work to that of surveying, in that "both are essentially visual; both impose a frame around something that has no clear boundaries of its own."
For instance, the horizon bisects his shots, so the crisp monochromatic images are half sky, half land. He's reimagining the place of his childhood, looking at the vast, empty landscapes that surely evoked agoraphobia in early pioneers.
Inspired by the recent revival of the influential New Topographics (which exhibited at CCP February 19-May 16); Locating Landscape: New Strategies, New Technologies, traces how GPS and Google mapping affect today's landscape photography. Nine contemporary artists take the romance out of landscape photography and replace it with humor and narrative. Guest-curated by University of Arizona photography historian Kate Palmer Albers, photos by Christiana Caro, Andrew Freeman, Frank Gohlke, Margot Anne Kelley, Mark Klett, Paho Mann, Adam Thorman and Byron Wolfe are on display.
Both exhibits open June 5 and run through August 1. CCP is on the UA campus at 1030 N. Olive Rd. Hours are Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm; Saturday-Sunday, 1pm-4pm. Admission is free, donations appreciated. Visit CreativePhotography.org or call 621-7968 for more information.
