Norton Photography Gallery
March 21, 2009 – September 6, 2009
Arizona's Grand Canyon—natural wonder, national park, tourist attraction, sacred land—is perhaps the world's best “photo op.” The collaborative photographic team of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe have set out to explore this celebrated place of dramatic beauty, and Phoenix Art Museum is proud to be the first to show a comprehensive look at their powerful, thoughtful, and playful approach to the Grand Canyon.
Drawn from two seasons of fieldwork, Charting the Canyon will include about 30 photographs ranging from a modest 20 by 20–inch print to a panorama nearly 10 feet wide. Mark Klett, a Regents Professor at Arizona State University, and Byron Wolfe, a former student of Klett’s who is now a Lantis’ University Professor teaches at California State University at Chico, have been interested in rephotographing historic images since their collaboration began in 1997.
Now the pair combines their own color photographs with imagery by 19th-century photographer J. K. Hillers and artist William Holmes and by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, who worked at the Canyon in the early 20th century. Klett and Wolfe respond to the historic images and the Canyon itself, yielding artworks that reconsider an icon, challenge how we perceive the land, and bring a new perspective to its portrayals.
Charting the Canyon offers visual delights: the humorous layering of a 19th-century drawing with contemporary photographic details, the extension of an Ansel Adams view into a serene panorama, and the illusion of three-dimensions with a stereopticon viewer built for the twenty-first century, among others to be discovered in this unique exhibition.
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Related Events
Lectures & Talks
Layering Time,
June 3, 7pm
PhxArtKids Days
Color, Glue and Photos Too, June 21, Noon – 3pm
Workshops & Other
Book Covers: Twice as Nice,
June 16, 10:30am
Digital Photography,
March 14 & 15, 10am – 4pm
Mother Nature, Father Time,
February 19, March 5, 19, April 2 & 16
Charting the Canyon is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and is presented in the Museum's Doris and John Norton Gallery.
Major support for this exhibition is provided by Lee and Michael Cohn, CFG Business Solutions, LLC.
Image Credits
Image: Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe. Rock formations on the Road to Lee's Ferry, Arizona, 2008. Left inset: William Bell, 1872. Plateau North of the Colorado River near the Paria. (courtesy National Archives) Right inset: William Bell, 1872. Headlands North of the Colorado River. (courtesy National Archives)