| Five
new large-scale, handmade artist’s books centerpiece San
Franciscan Michael Light’s ongoing aerial photographic investigation
into the complex landscapes of the American West. Shot with a
large-format camera from small, self-piloted aircraft and rented
helicopters, Near Planet highlights Light’s vision of vast,
stunning
beauty coupled with the bleakest realities of human manipulation
of the environment.
Meditating on scale, geology, hubris and our insatiable hunger for
materials, Bingham Mine/Garfield Stack 04.21.06 examines the
world’s largest man-made hole, a copper mine outside Salt
Lake
City, Utah, and the nearby Garfield Smelter Stack, the tallest
free-standing structure west of the Mississippi River. Rancho San
Pedro 04.28.06 is a survey of the southern Los Angeles basin shot
in color that focuses on oil extraction, refining, global shipping,
automobile transportation, and land use in LA’s most blighted
cities
of Compton, Carson, and Dominguez. The work shows a world of
utter human transformation, yet still connected to history, and
suffering the beauty of green growth each spring.
Other books explore the Mono Craters of Mono Lake, California;
the Nevada valleys of Silverpeak and Walker Lake; and the blasted
remains of Bikini Island in the South Pacific.
Each book encapsulates an element of performance, in that it is
comprised of a single flight of intense observation. The darkness
permeating the work – not only the inky blacks, but the edge
of
despair – is tenuously contained by the undeniable majesty,
and
even endurance, of the natural world, however marred and
altered.
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