Devour the Land considers how contemporary photographers have responded to the U.S. military’s impact on the domestic environment since the 1970s, a dynamic period for environmental activism as well as for photography. This catalogue presents a lively range of voices at the intersection of art, environmentalism, militarism, photography, and politics. Alongside interviews with prominent contemporary artists working in the landscape photography tradition, the images speak to photographers’ varied motivations, personal experiences, and artistic approaches. The result is a surprising picture of the ways violence and warfare surround us. Although most modern combat has taken place abroad, the U.S. domestic landscape bears the footprint of armed conflict—much of the environmental damage we live with today was caused by our own militarDevour the Land considers how contemporary photographers have responded to the U.S. military’s impact on the domestic environment since the 1970s, a dynamic period for environmental activism as well as for photography.

Makeda Best is the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums.

With contributions by Makeda Best, Steven Hoelscher, Abrahm Lustgarten, Courtney J. Martin, Katherine Mintie, and Will Wilson. Also includes interviews with artists Sheila Pree Bright, Terry Evans, Ashley Gilbertson, David T. Hanson, Stacy Kranitz, Jin Lee, Richard Misrach, Barbara Norfleet, and Oscar Palacio, as well as poems by Ed Roberson from his collection To See the Earth Before the End of the World (2010).

The exhibition Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970 is on display at the Harvard Art Museums from September 17, 2021 to January 16, 2022.

Explore more at harvardartmuseums.org/devourtheland

Published by VSW Press, 2011

Transitions is an international collaboration looking at the changing city of Rochester, NY, a former company town dealing with urban sprawl, new concepts of city planning, and high unemployment rates and poverty.