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Lot Essay
Print titles are as follows:
Spokane, Portland and Seattle #31, 1998
Spokane, Portland and Seattle #35, 2001
Las Vegas and Tonopah #12, 1997
Great Northern #2A, 2005
For the past three decades Mark Ruwedel has been fastidiously surveying the evolving landscape of the American West. Partially drawing influence from the 1975 exhibition at the George Eastman House, New Topographics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscapes, which brought to public consciousness photography by Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams and Henry Wessel Jr., among others, Ruwedel employs a critical if subtle eye in his assessment of the topographic changes caused by human activity. Like many of his predecessors, Ruwedel relies on black-and-white photography to enhance the texture and formalist qualities of his photographs. Subsequently, his images are imbued with a seemingly empirical stance. A closer look, however, gently peels away the initial impression of objectivity and reveals an artist who aims to engage his viewers in an environmental discourse that insists on awareness of past human enterprise and its aftermath.
In Westward the Course of Empire, the series exemplified by the four images in the current lot, Ruwedel presents landscapes that have been sliced, bombed, excavated and dug during the nineteenth-century to make way for the quickly-expanding network of railways, which has since been neglected. Many of the railway lines depicted in Ruwedel’s photographs attest to earlier modes of transportation and exploration, when romanticized notions of the West as a source of wealth permeated the American psyche. Companies eager to capitalize on advances in technology and the promised riches of the West, carved their way across mountain ranges, flatlands and forests. Over a century later, Ruwedel spent fifteen years studying one-hundred-and-thirty such sites. While at first glance all that appear are seemingly natural ridges or dents in a given landscape, a closer look reveals a dusty path, broken tracks, defunct wire cables and misplaced rocks. Collectively, the four images present a haunting reminder of forsaken ruins created during the American Industrial Age.
Ruwedel’s photographs can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and Tate Modern, London, among others.
Spokane, Portland and Seattle #31, 1998
Spokane, Portland and Seattle #35, 2001
Las Vegas and Tonopah #12, 1997
Great Northern #2A, 2005
For the past three decades Mark Ruwedel has been fastidiously surveying the evolving landscape of the American West. Partially drawing influence from the 1975 exhibition at the George Eastman House, New Topographics: Photographs of Man-Altered Landscapes, which brought to public consciousness photography by Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams and Henry Wessel Jr., among others, Ruwedel employs a critical if subtle eye in his assessment of the topographic changes caused by human activity. Like many of his predecessors, Ruwedel relies on black-and-white photography to enhance the texture and formalist qualities of his photographs. Subsequently, his images are imbued with a seemingly empirical stance. A closer look, however, gently peels away the initial impression of objectivity and reveals an artist who aims to engage his viewers in an environmental discourse that insists on awareness of past human enterprise and its aftermath.
In Westward the Course of Empire, the series exemplified by the four images in the current lot, Ruwedel presents landscapes that have been sliced, bombed, excavated and dug during the nineteenth-century to make way for the quickly-expanding network of railways, which has since been neglected. Many of the railway lines depicted in Ruwedel’s photographs attest to earlier modes of transportation and exploration, when romanticized notions of the West as a source of wealth permeated the American psyche. Companies eager to capitalize on advances in technology and the promised riches of the West, carved their way across mountain ranges, flatlands and forests. Over a century later, Ruwedel spent fifteen years studying one-hundred-and-thirty such sites. While at first glance all that appear are seemingly natural ridges or dents in a given landscape, a closer look reveals a dusty path, broken tracks, defunct wire cables and misplaced rocks. Collectively, the four images present a haunting reminder of forsaken ruins created during the American Industrial Age.
Ruwedel’s photographs can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and Tate Modern, London, among others.