Sean McFarland's Glass Mountains

Abstract

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The photographs that comprise the series Glass Mountains (2012-present) grow out of and extend from Sean McFarland's long-standing investigation of the natural world and how it has been represented by photography. McFarland, a California native, has long been preoccupied by the landscape of the American West. Beginning with Pictures of the Earth (2007-12), an earlier series that combined photographs of the Western landscape with his own imagined collages, McFarland's work has consistently sought to mine the myth of the West itself rather than simply describe it. McFarland received an MFA in photography from the California College of the Arts in 2004, and is currently a visiting assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. McFarland showed his newest work, Glass Mountains, at Visual Studies Workshop in spring of 2015. Glass mountains formed throughout the Western United States when quickly cooling lava created peaks of obsidian, a vitreous black rock. I he poetic term is contradictory in nature: although glass and rock derive from the same elements, a mountain made of glass would be more likely to shatter than stand the test of time. When applied to McFarland's pictures, the term suggests that the concept of wilderness itself is a mythological and malleable construction. Many contemporary artists seek to deconstruct and understand the ways society has used photography to catalog and define experiences with nature. The rich history of landscape photography, from Timothy O'Sullivan's survey views and Ansel Adams's majestic vistas to natural history textbooks and scientific manuals, informs McFarland's work. In the past he combined found images and documentary photographs to create imaginary views. With Glass Mountains, he does not seek to depict or record the terrain charted by those who came before him as much as to interpret a new cultural understanding of the wilderness based on their accumulated viewpoints. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Natural history is itself a human construction and is as much McFarland's subject as the landscapes he photographs. Moon Study (gelatin silver print and graphite on board, 2014) was inspired by The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite, a volume published in 1874 by James Nasmyth that includes what at first appear to be photographs of the moon. The illusion of reality breaks down upon closer examination, exposing plaster models that Nasmyth built from detailed sketches he made while gazing at the lunar surface through his homemade telescope. Neither fact nor fiction, these photographs depict one man's perception of a distant topography and a desire to document and define the unknown. Like Nasmyth's theatrical plaster models, McFarland's experimentations with the camera often serve to approximate natural phenomena. Moon Study suggests the luminescent orb solely by alluding to its circular shape. The fact that it was made from a photogram of a coin proves how quickly symbols begin to stand in for or approximate what they are intended to represent. This photogram demonstrates photography's ability to represent an idea at the same time that it fails to accurately reproduce it. …