At MNA we look at the land through many lenses. Some are literal lenses – microscopes, binoculars, and telescopes. Many are figurative – mapping data to reveal an otherwise unseen pattern or reconstructing a place in time from remnants that remain.
Art can be another lens to bring the world into focus. The Great Unknown: Artists at Glen Canyon and Lake Powell opens in May, exploring that area through the artistic lens of the photographer. The starting point is Eliot Porter’s striking, nearly abstracted images. Porter’s book The Place No One Knew established the genre of photobooks for environmental causes. Among the other works in the exhibition are the black and white photos by Martin Stupich, where the dam itself dominates the frame, as well as more recent images by Peter Goin that bring attention to what the receding waters of Lake Powell reveal. The Great Unknownhas been drawn from an exhibition of the same name previously on show at the New Mexico Museum of Art, and curated by Katherine Ware, MoA’s Curator of Photography.
