Michael Light: New Work

San Francisco-based Michael Light shows new work from his ongoing series of aerial photographs investigating the complex landscapes of the American West. Shot with a large-format camera from a small, self-piloted aircraft or rented helicopter, Light’s photographs capture the collision between the vast, stunning beauty of the Western topography and the bleak realities of a marred and manipulated environment.

Light will present a selection from several new bodies of work, many in a new vertical format. One series reveals an unexpected, Zen-like beauty in the angular patterns of oil derricks near Taft, California. Another series was taken over the Sierra Nevada range between Bridgeport and Lee Vining, including vertigo-inducing views of the Rattlesnake Hills and Conway Pass.

Also included in the exhibition is Light’s latest large-scale artist book, which utilizes both color and black and white photographs, of the Phoenix metropolitan area, titled Salt River, Deadman Wash, Paradise Valley. Many of the images were shot close to the ground, revealing in detail the unavoidable incongruities of a sprawling and ever-expanding city built in a desert.

Michael Light received a Guggenheim Foundation award in 2007. A major exhibition of his aerial photographs opened at the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno in September 2008. A previous body of work, 100 SUNS, has been traveling internationally since 2003, appearing at museums in the U.S. as well as Rome, Luxembourg, and Rotterdam.