'In Passing: American Landscape Photography'

Central to the exhibition is a selection of works by SCAD photography professor Tom Fischer. Taken from his “Paradise/Paradox” series, the images profile Fischer’s ongoing search for personal truths within a rapidly changing landscape. Fischer’s practice is concerned with “extensive investigations of places that are recognized for their perfection of form, as well as images of beauty in wholly imperfect places.”

A major influence on his practice is renowned photographer Ansel Adams, for whom Fischer worked early in his career. Adams’ oeuvre marks a transition in the representation of the American landscape, shifting from an attempt to capture the beauty of the sublime landscape to more complex investigations into the environmental, social and political changes wrought on the land during the last century.

The work of Aaron Brumbelow (M.F.A., photography, 2013; B.F.A., photography, 2008) explores fictional realms while referencing early American photographic histories. His exhibition features a series of silver-gelatin contact prints culled from the computer game “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” which leads players on an exploration charting one’s own path through an unforgiving landscape. Brumbelow’s series brings attention to the early role of photography as a tool in charting new territories and creating mythologies about the land. He draws parallels between early representations of the “West” and our new, largely uncharted digital existence.

Jeff Rich (M.F.A., photography, 2008; B.F.A., film and video, 2000) presents images from his long-term photo essay “Watershed,” consisting of three chapters: the French Broad River, the Tennessee River and the Mississippi River. This documentary project closely follows the long-term impact of environmental policies and investigates the interrelationship between human activity on the land and its effect on water.

Victoria Sambunaris’ “Taxonomy of a Landscape” is a monumental grid installation comprising more than 1,000 photographs of the artist’s travels through Alaska (2003), Yellowstone National Park (2008-09), the United States-Mexico border region (2009-13) and the Texas Gulf region (2014-15). As a mostly itinerant artist, Sambunaris annually structures her life around a photographic journey, and the installation emphasizes her interest in the crossroads between geology, industry and culture.

Rebecca Norris Webb’s “My Dakota” takes a poetic track and is concerned with memory, time and geographies of loss. Images from the series trace the artist’s return to where she came of age and attempt to capture a personal and intimate view of the American West. The vantage point from a traveling car is central to her photographs in the exhibition, providing a fleeting yet personal engagement with the environment.

Spanning from intimate and subjective to more scientific and objective approaches, the exhibition “In Passing: American Landscape Photography” invites the viewer to consider our complex relations to the land and environment as consumers, observers and participants in its constant flux. The exhibition grapples with not only the transient aspects of social and environmental changes impacting the landscape but also the shift in its representation and perception over time.