Continuing through August 31, 2015
“Human/Nature: Photographers Constructing the Natural World" turns its back on the aesthetic premise that nature’s beauty is enhanced by the absence of human presence. Members of this assembly of ten photographers purposely feature a wide range of signs of humanity as essential elements in their vision of nature. Robert Von Sternberg humorously makes an orange plastic parking cone the central element in “Columbia Ice Field, Canada.” Lewis Baltz emphasizes the contrast in line and form between a bleak suburban home and the trees visible behind it.
In his digital print, “Auduboniana: Passenger Pigeon, Federal Building," Victor Landweber extracts elements of famed ornithologist John James Audubon’s painting of a pair of passenger pigeons in their natural environment, superimposing them over an image of a government building. The original painting by Audubon is dated 1824, when Ectopistes migratorius was the most abundant bird in North America. That was nearly a century before the last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, died at the Cincinnati Zoo. The photographers here rely on a variety of techniques to best offer up their diverse views on the theme of the show, inviting critical dialogue about the impact of our own growing population on what remains of the undeveloped natural world.
Published Courtesy of ArtSceneCal ©2015
