Devour the Land: An Introduction

September 29, 2021
A blue-saturated photograph of a desert landscape at night with a winding road in the foreground and mountains in the background. A blue-saturated photograph of a desert landscape at night with a winding road in the foreground and mountains in the background. In large white letters at the top are the words “Devour the Land” and text at the bottom reads “War and American Landscape Photography since 1970” and “September 17, 2021–¬January 16, 2022.”
Sim Chi Yin, Singaporean, Mountain range surrounding the Nevada Test Site, from the series Most People Were Silent, November 2017. Archival pigment print. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Richard and Ronay Menschel Fund for the Acquisition of Photographs, 2020.181. © Sim Chi Yin; image courtesy of the artist.

Curator Makeda Best, alongside commentary from photographers Nina Berman, Sharon Stewart, and Robert Del Tredici, provides a brief introduction to our new special exhibition, Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970. Featuring approximately 160 photographs from 60 artists, the exhibition invites you to explore the impacts of military activity on the American landscape—and how photography supports activism in response to these effects. 

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