MARK KLETT (Albany, United States, 1952).
"Balancing Rocks, road to Lee's Ferry", "Marble Canyon, Arizona", "Untitled". 1986.
Photograph (Triptych). Copy 16/50.
Provenance: Estheryoh Stern Gallery (Arizona).
With label from Estheryoh Stern Gallery (Arizona).
Two of the photographs are titled at the lower left. One of the photographs is dated in the lower area.
Size: 50 x 40 cm (x3).
Triptych made up of three photographs dominated by a large natural formation, which varies in each case, forcing the spectator to reflect on the perspective and the point of view from which specific moments are observed or captured. All three pieces are finished in black and white, in such a way as to give a sense of documentary photography, reminiscent in some ways of the industrial landscapes of Bernd and Hilla Becher, but in this case focusing the gaze on the natural.
He lives in Temple (Arizona, USA), where he is Regents Professor of Art at Arizona State University. He is interested in the intersection of culture, landscape and time. Klett began working as a photographer in the 1960s. Previously, he had worked as a geologist. In 1984, he published Second View, a vast project to re-photograph the scenery of the American West that well-known photographers such as Timothy O'Sullivan, among others, recorded in the course of expeditions commissioned by the Federal Government during the second half of the 19th century. With this project, Klett generated, at the same time, three important elements: the methodology necessary to develop the rigorous genre of rephotography, the human team necessary to encompass the ambitious aims of his projects, and a discourse on the construction of the collective imaginary. At the end of the 1990s, Klett took up the same work again, which led him to publish the monograph Third Views, Second Sights, which brings together the images made in the 19th century, those of the 1970s and those of the end of the 20th century.