Featuring the work of Olaf Otto Becker, Edward Burtynsky, Joshua Lutz, Christopher LaMarca, David Maisel, and Simon Norfolk

Shifting Landscapes, timed with the release of Christopher LaMarca’s Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape and Earth Day 2008, features several prominent photographers’ perspectives on our environment and its natural and often unnatural states.

Addressing important environmental issues such as global warming, destruction of America’s old growth forests, waste, pollution, and the environmental effects of war on the landscape, Shifting Landscapes offers an opportunity to consider what nature and its magnitude evoke in us—some marvel, some destroy, some defend.

Shifting Landscapes features Olaf Otto Becker’s serene photographs of Greenland’s sprawling and rapidly melting glaciers; Edward Burtynsky’s vast and unimaginable mountainous landscape of discarded tires; Joshua Lutz’s intimate study of New Jersey’s dwindling natural wetlands and the landfills and poorly planned developments responsible for their destruction; Christopher LaMarca’s activist inspired documentary work with elusive forest defenders in majestic and vulnerable north western old growth forests; David Maisel’s bird’s eye perspective on a convergence of roadways in Los Angeles exposing abused desert terrain; and Simon Norfolk’s photographs of the detritus of decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq as philosophical metaphors for the foolishness of pride, awe and the sublime, and the vanity of Empire.

Artists include:

• Olaf Otto Becker has exhibited widely in Europe and the US. His first book Under the Nordic Light was short-listed for the renowned 2006 Rencontres D’Arles Book Award and his images from Iceland were featured at the Reykjavik Museum of Photography. Broken Line, published by Hatje Cantz, is the winner of the “Deutsche Fotobuchpreis” 2008.

• Edward Burtynsky was born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage at St. Catharines, Ontario. His photographs are in the collections of major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim Museum in New York. Burtynsky’s work has recently been exhibited in solo and group shows across Canada, in the United States, Europe and Asia. His images have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them: Art in America, The Smithsonian, Harper’s Magazine, Flash Art, Blind Spot, Art Forum, Saturday Night, Canadian Art, Playboy, GQ, the National Geographic Society and the New York Times. Mr. Burtynsky’s distinctions include the TED Prize, and the Outreach award at the Rencontres d’Arles.

• Joshua Lutz received his MFA in photography from the International Center of Photography and Bard College in 2005. In 2004, he received Best Editorial awards from both Photo District News and Communication Arts, and was also named one of PDN’s top 30 emerging photographers. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, ArtNews, and Time, and he has exhibited at the Art Directors Club and the International Center of Photography in New York.

• Christopher LaMarca studied Environmental Studies and Biology at the University of Oregon, a degree that led him to pursue photographic projects documenting environmental issues. His work on the protection of old growth forests against logging garnered him numerous awards, including PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers To Watch and NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism. His Forest Defenders project was featured in the 2006-2007 ICP triennial, Ecotopia, along with being published in Aperture and Art Review. His clients include Volvo, Newsweek, Time, Fortune, The Fader, and Outside, among others.

• David Maisel was born in New York City in 1961. He received his B.A. from Princeton University in 1984 and went to the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University from 1988 to 1989. For more than two decades, David Maisel has explored American landscapes that have been transformed by severe environmental damage. Captured from an aerial perspective, Maisel’s photographs appear as abstracted, yet complex, maps of the abused terrain that serve as means to meditate on contemporary consciousness. Maisel has exhibited widely in the United States. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where he is the vice-president of Photo Alliance, a non-profit organization devoted to contemporary photography. His works are represented in many museum collections, including Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, in New York City; the George Eastman House, Rochester; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

• Simon Norfolk, born in Nigeria in 1963 was the recipient of the World Press Award in 2001 and the Infinity Award in 2004. He is the author of three monographs, is exhibited widely around the world, and is major collections including The Getty, Los Angeles; The Portland Museum of Art, Portland; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Photographers Gallery, London; and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston among many others. Norfolk lives and works in Brighton on the south coast of England.