Constellations

BLDGBLOG: Altered Landscape

Works by Terry Evans, David Maisel, Richard Misrach, Amy Stein, Edward Burtynsky, Michael Wolf, Kim Stringfellow, Emmet Gowin, Michael Light, Sharon Stewart, Toshio Shibata, Todd Hido, and dozens more fill the book, depicting California suburbs and deep desert weapons-testing facilities, oil pipelines, hydroelectric dams, and quarries; there are clearcut forests and solar plants, Arctic radar fields and National Park parking lots.

In “Howl” by Amy Stein, seen above, a wolf lost in the glare of light pollution breaks the silence of an abstract landscape, turning to the artificial astronomy of the municipal grid—its surrogate moons and constellations of streetlamps—to reorient itself in the snow. However, it’s worth pointing out that the wolf is, in fact, stuffed: Stein’s work simultaneously stages and documents what she calls “modern dioramas of our new natural history.”

via BLDGBLOG: Altered Landscape.