View Finder: Landscape and Leisure in the Collection

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 19, 5-7PM

Historically, landscape photography has played a vital role in shaping the public’s concept of the outdoors. Photographer William Henry Jackson’s federally funded photographic survey of the American West in the late nineteenth century was later used to persuade Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park. Decades later, Ansel Adams created some of the most well-known landscape images in history, while working with the Sierra Club to successfully advocate for the government's expansion of national parks, including Yellowstone and Yosemite.

Historical photographs by Ansel Adams and William Henry Jackson are presented alongside works by contemporary photographers including David Avison, Jonas N.T. Becker, Marilyn Bridges, Terry Evans, Justin Kimball, and Greg Stimac. Highlights include David Avison’s images from his Changing Chicago series, taken at Chicago beaches in the late 1980s and Terry Evans’s Meet Me at The Trinity series, which captures images of a community gathering on a riverbed against the backdrop of a highly engineered landscape.

Running concurrently with Lucas Foglia: Human Nature and curated by MoCP curator of academic programs and collections Kristin Taylor, View Finder: Landscape and Leisure in the Collection not only portrays photography’s historical role in the establishment of parks but also a more contemporary view of the various ways people use these spaces for spiritual healing, mental clarity, or other, more subliminal needs.