A PRC Speaker Series presentation with Laura McPhee
December 4, 2024, 6 – 7:30pm
This is a HYBRID presentation: Online via Zoom, and In-Person at
Lesley University, University Hall screening room
lower level, 1815 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge
For IN-PERSON tickets click HERE
For ONLINE tickets click HERE
Laura McPhee’s landscape photographs made over the last decade or so in the American west provoke questions about our attitudes and beliefs about the earth we inhabit, questions sometimes environmental, sometimes cultural or geographical. Made with film and a large-format view camera, the photographs envelop time, both geologic and human. A serpentine river cuts a deep meander in the land. A gold mine on the edge of the Black Rock Desert is an incision, exposing a ruddy interior. A still-life found on slickrock in the Navajo Nation reveals fragments of human presence — machine parts, zippers, desert-varnished tin cans, a tiny plastic toy among shards of glass and rust. A meditation on our material lives and the unintended consequences of humanity’s attempts to control and manage nature, the images depict our paradoxical efforts as we come to terms with the reality of climate change and as we variously attempt to restore, protect, alter, and exploit the land.
McPhee’s work has been widely exhibited both in the United States and abroad and she has had the good fortune to be the recipient of a number of grants and residencies. Her photographs are included in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Getty Center, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Laura McPhee was a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design where she enjoyed decades teaching extraordinary students. She remains the Director of the Graduate Program in Photography at MassArt.
