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“Fruit Loops Landscape,” modeled after a 1863 Carleton Watkins photo of the Albion River in California. -
“Blue Dye #1 Precipice,” modeled after a 1967 Carleton Watkins photo of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. -
“Monoculture Plains,” modeled after a 1967 Carleton Watkins photo of Cape Horn on the Columbia River in Oregon. -
“Saturated Fat Foothills,” modeled after a 1963 Carleton Watkins photo near Santa Clara, California. -
“White Bread Mountain,” modeled after a 1961 Carleton Watkins photo of Cathedral Rock in Yosemite National Park.
Artists Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman draw on old photographs of the American West for their new exhibit, Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape. They recreate classic landscapes using industrialized food: lakes of soggy Froot Loops, marshmallow chasms, monoliths of ground beef. Melting popsicles even serve as surrogate saguaro cacti.
Ciurej and Lochman say their work reimagines Carleton Watkins’ famed landscape photos, which served as “both documentation and advertisement” for the Old West. Watkins helped draw would-be settlers to the region with his photographs of its thriving railroad, lumber and mining industries, as well as some of the first images of what would become our national parks. Processed Views turns his approach on its head, using the landscape photography of the 19th century to make a powerful point about American consumption habits and the march of progress in the 21st century.
Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape
Photography Exhibition at Colorado Photographic Arts Center in Denver through Nov. 26
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Famous Western landscapes, recreated with processed food.
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