Photographers of the American Southwest

Mark Klett

A panoramic collage of Yosemite's Sentinel Dome combines recent and historic photographs. (Photos courtesy Berkeley Art Museum)

Mark Klett was born in Albany, New York, in 1952. His education was first in geology (B. S. from St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, in 1974) and later in photography (M.F.A. from State University of New York, Buffalo, Program at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York). His earliest jobs were as a photographer with the U.S. Geologic Survey.

His work received early recognition, with an Emerging Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979. Since that time, he has received many other awards. In 2001, he was named a Regents Professor at Arizona State University.

Mark is a prolific photographer and has produced almost one book a year in tandem with other photographers and writers. His latest book on Yosemite, explores the changes and impact of this magnificent landscape, that has inspired so many Americans.

"Rephotographing Eadweard Muybridge's extraordinary 1872 mammoth-plate pictures of Yosemite was only the first reason Mark Klett, Byron Wolfe, and I went to Yosemite in the summer of 2001 and returned for four more expeditions. We were interested in Muybridge, and rephotography was a uniquely compelling way to investigate his wanderings across the steep topography of the Sierra. But we were interested in Muybridge because we were interested in time as photography freezes it, represents it, and questions its nature." Solnit

"Yosemite in Time" exhibit opens at Berkeley Art Museum

The exhibit, up through Dec. 23, also includes six original albumen plates by Muybridge, loaned to the exhibit by The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Yosemite in Time features more than forty photographs, including work by Watkins, Adams, Weston, and six original albumen plates by Muybridge from the collection of UC Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. Several of the photographs have been combined to form large-scale panoramic collages, some measuring more than ten feet in length, in which the earlier photographs are inserted into contemporary views of the landscape.

Southwest Explorer Home--Calendar--Sacred Places--Photographers