Museum of New Mexico
 
IDEA Photographic: After Modernism Themes
Themes Artists Images Essays About idea Photographic
Early to Late Modernism
click to enlarge click to enlarge

Cultural Landscape

If we are again to learn how to respond emotionally and aesthetically and morally to the landscape, we must find a metaphor—or several metaphors—drawn from our human experience...We can best rely on the insights of the geographer and the photographer and the philosopher. They are the most trustworthy custodians of the human tradition; for they seek to discover order within randomness, beauty within chaos, and the enduring aspirations of mankind behind blunders and failures.

—John B. Jackson, The Essential Landscape: The New Mexico Photographic Survey, with essays by J.B. Jackson, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press and the Museum of New Mexico, 1985, 84.

Historically, photographers provided important documentation about the relationship between man-made structures and the natural world. Today, artists expand documentary styles that are more informed by their environment and culture. They express human contexts and complex values from our changing world. The cultural landscape engages the viewer's human consciousness on multiple levels. Interdisciplinary in character, these photographs promise no solutions and remind us of the challenging relationships between art and life.

click to enlarge
Featured Artists
       
     

Home | Themes | Artists | Images | Essays | About Idea Photographic
© | Museum of New Mexico