Victoria Sambunaris: Altered Lands

For more than 25 years, Victoria Sambunaris has traveled across the United States photographing landscapes shaped by our incursions into the natural world. Equipped with a large format field camera and color negative film, she spends weeks researching and revisiting locations before making a single exposure. Her methodical process is driven, as she describes it, by a fascination with “how we inhabit our landscapes and what they become as we forge ahead.”

Presented in dialogue with Ansel Adams: Majestic Lands, this exhibition extends the American landscape tradition into the 21st century, asking visitors to reconsider how we think about landscapes today. While both artists capture grand vistas largely devoid of human figures, Sambunaris brings infrastructure like railroads, highways, mines, and powerlines into sharp focus within this sublime. Rather than separating untouched wilderness from human intervention, her meticulously composed photographs reveal the two as inseparable parts of the contemporary American landscape.

This exhibition is organized in partnership with Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh.

Please note: Victoria Sambunaris: Altered Lands and Ansel Adams: Majestic Lands are ticketed exhibitions.
One ticket gives visitors access to both exhibitions. No advance registration is required. Tickets may be purchased at the Museum.
General admission remains free and gives visitors access to all other areas of the Museum.
Tickets: Non-members: $10 adults/$5 children | FREE for Museum members | Groups: $5/person | FREE for EBT cardholders as part of the Museums for All program

Artwork credit: Victoria Sambunaris, Untitled (houses), Wendover, Utah, 2007. Chromogenic print. Image courtesy of the artist